2023: Candidates Ought To Be Worried About Nigeria’s Debt Profile — Afe Babalola SAN

Legal luminary and elder statesman, Aare Afe Babalola, yesterday said any Nigerian aspiring to lead the country ought to be worried about the country’s debt profile and advocated for urgent measures to defray the huge foreign debts.

Babalola, who stated this while answering questions on the endorsement of the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, during a press conference, noted that whoever emerges President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor. should approach the country’s creditors for either total debt forgiveness or for substantial reduction of the debts.

Babalola, who noted that Obasanjo’s endorsement of the presidential candidate of Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, was his right of expression, added that it might be as a result of the candidate’s acclaimed untainted records of character and sound education.

He, however, said that only a moneybag and not the best candidate will win the forthcoming presidential election. According to him, it is the candidate who has money will win the presidential election. Babalola also reiterated that the 1999 Constitution will not guarantee emergence of credible leaders in Nigeria.

He said unless a new constitution similar to those of 1960 and 1963 constitutions, with necessary amendments, is put in place, none of the candidates can save Nigeria from collapse. The legal icon recalled urging the Federal Government to suspend the general elections and raise an interim government.

He said: “I still stand by my suggestion that any election conducted under the 1999 Constitution cannot and will not produce new leaders with new ideas. “Any election conducted under the 1999 Constitution will merely result in recycling the same people who brought Nigeria to grinding poverty, mass unemployment, underfunded education, insecurity and huge external debts.”

He stressed that the 1999 Constitution needed to be revised to produce the type of change agent and developmental leader, Chief Obasanjo had in mind. “If I contest for political office today, I will fail, not because I am not qualified, but because the system will make me not win. I have no sympathy for any Nigerian aspiring to rule Nigeria in any form, whether as a legislator, governor or president. “The fact remains that the 1999 Constitution, on a large scale, is the root cause of economic, social, political and religious problems in the country today.

“The new constitution should provide for stringent conditions in respect of age, academic qualifications, character and personality, as well as the family background of candidates, especially for the presidency and the National Assembly,” he said.