Former president says corruption must be kicked out of Nigeria

Former President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, in his Independence Day speech to Nigerians, has urged the present government of Muhammadu Buhari, to do everything within his powers to make sure that corruption is kicked out of the country for good.

Obasanjo noted that if the malaise is allowed to continue to fester, it is capable of derailing the nation and plunge it deeper into the doldrums.

In the statement, Obasanjo said:

"within our society, we must kick corruption out because it destroys almost everything.

I am not talking about corruption of money, corruption of attitude, nepotism, favouritism, there are corruption in different forms and all aspects of corruption must be kicked out of our society.

55 years in the life of a nation is comparatively young, growing and when you look at the life and history of those that you may call settled societies or reasonably matured countries, we are not doing too badly.

They have had miss steps just like we are having miss steps, they have made mistakes and most of them have learnt from their mistakes, they have been dynamic in the way they have progressed and I believe that we are doing the same thing.

What is important is that certain cardinal pinches, cardinal features of our national live, values, should not be eroded. And then we should also be willing to learn from our mistakes."