By Muhammed Shaeed
August 26th, 2024
Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian President has said that there’s no reason for Africa to be poor owing to its abundant resources
Obasanjo made this statement on Monday at the opening ceremony of the FESTAC Africa Festival at the Jomo Kenyatta Stadium in Kisumu, Kenya.
He also stated that the pervasive poverty in Africa is not an act of God but that of man-man.
He said, “Africa has no reason to be poor. Our poverty is not an act of God. We are steeped in poverty due to our poor mentality. We need to wake up because we have a wealth of resources.
If you look back in history, you will see that whenever others needed to get work done, they came to Africa to transport black people to the so-called New World to make others rich. And that hasn’t stopped. The slave trade led to colonialism. We enrich others while remaining impoverished. We need to awaken.
“Structural adjustment was the idea of the World Bank. However, I disagreed because we lacked the structure. What exactly were we adjusting? They were simply deceiving us.”