Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Thursday, lamented the high level of corruption among Nigerian politicians, advocating that such individuals should be imprisoned.

Obasanjo, Nigeria’s first democratically elected Head of State, who served for eight years from 1999 to 2007, decried the criminal behaviour among certain political officeholders.

“If you examine the people in government today at both executive and legislative levels, some of them should be permanently behind bars for their past misdemeanours and criminal misconduct.

“You cannot expect thieves to deliver fair judgment in favour of the rightful owner of the property,” the ex-military leader said virtually during the memorial lecture of the late cleric Denis Slattery, held in Lagos State, titled, ‘The Imperative for Moral Rectitude in Governance.’

The Abeokuta-born elder statesman recalled an instance where he challenged a politician (name undisclosed) who had made a false statement, but instead of correcting it, the politician simply attributed his statement to the nature of “politics.”

Obasanjo added, “The first thing that shocked me when I entered politics was the level of corruption among election officials, which was considered normal.

“The second was the extent of general and criminal misbehaviour, which was treated with levity and impunity. We were in a meeting where a man lied, and I confronted him. The next thing he said was, ‘It’s all politics, Sir.’

“Every wrongdoing is excused as politics, which suggests that politics has no room for morality, principles, rectitude, ethics, good character, or positive attributes.”

He stressed that the oil-rich nation needs “transformational leaders rather than transactional leaders, truth instead of lies, honesty instead of dishonesty, integrity instead of disintegration, hope instead of despair, production instead of deduction, inclusion instead of exclusion and marginalisation.”

Recall that last month, Obasanjo had made the same call for many politicians to be jailed when he received six members of the House of Representatives in Abeokuta.

“The real issue is ourselves. Yes, the system needs rethinking, but the character of people in government must change. With all due respect, many in government should currently be behind bars or on the gallows,” Obasanjo had said.

(From The Punch excluding headline)