It is annoying that our diversity is being mismanaged with impunity – Obasanjo

Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo has decried the “annoying” mismanagement of the country’s diversity by its leadership, insisting that as long as the continued to mismanage its plurality, it would remain stagnant.

Obasanjo who spoke while delivering a paper titled: “Towards a re-unification of the sacred and secular: Religious interventions in politics,” on Monday at the 9th Toyin Falola Annual International Conference held at Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State, said Nigerians were not happy because they could not get their heart desires. He said the leadership must learn to balance religion, ethnicity in politics.

“You can’t take politics and leave religion, and you can’t take religion and leave politics; they are together; they both affect the welfare and the well-being of all of us as we live. As far as religion is concerned, there are two issues: diversity and identity,” he said.

“We are so badly handling our diversity that we are losing our identity. As long as we are doing that, we are going nowhere.

Obasanjo warned that: “When you mismanage diversity with impunity, it is particularly annoying. It can lead to what we may not want it to lead to.

“I don’t know of any Nigerian who doesn’t wish Nigeria well, but, I know many Nigerians who are unhappy and want to leave Nigeria. Our issue is so because what they expect from Nigeria they are not getting.”

“God is a Nigerian because what we have gone through in Nigeria and what we are going through, probably, Nigeria should not be on the map of the world. That’s why I say God is a Nigerian.”

Also speaking at the event, the country’s Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, said the theme of the conference was relevant, as according to him: “The interface between religion and the state was limited to issues of secularism, secularisation and separation of powers between state and religion.

The Vice President who was represented by the Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Prof Is-haq Oloyede, explained that “Contemporary scholarships have however noted that religion covertly or otherwise places more role in human and societal lives than previously acknowledged.

“Religion is a veritable tool for national and global development. On the other hand, religion has often been used or implicated as a divisive factor often employed as an instrument to spread hate and unleash violence over one another.”

He assured that the government Osinbajo said would continue to strive to utilise the mandate of the people to promote the best interest of all citizens and all humanity in general.