Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Thursday, painted scary picture of how the out break of Coronavirus compelled him to jettison important programs intended to mark his 83rd birthday celebration.
\nHe disclosed that he was forced to make adjustments to his 83rd birthday programme\u00a0 because of the outbreak of the coronavirus which had spread across the world.
\nObasanjo made the disclosure in Abeokuta while speaking at a symposium organised to celebrate his 83rd birthday.
\nHe said that the birthday ceremony was originally scheduled to hold between Tuesday and Friday, adding that the programmes for Tuesday and Wednesday were put off because some of the participants could not attend because of the coronavirus.
\n\u201cWhen we were thinking of this celebration,\u00a0 two programmes came to mind.
\n\u201cOne was to consider\u00a0 what Asian countries have done to make their continent become what they have become.
\n\u201d We had planned a round-table discussion which was meant\u00a0 to share lessons from Asia\u2019s development\u00a0 for strengthening Africa\u2019s integration and cooperation in the area of socio-economic development.
\n\u201cWe had wanted to consider countries like Malaysia which was worse than\u00a0 us when we\u00a0 got our independence in 1960 , South Korea,\u00a0which was below us and Vietnam which was plunged into series of wars.
\n\u201cHowever, because of\u00a0 Coronavirus,\u00a0 that programme was shelved because some of the intended participants would not have been able to attend.
\n\u201d I do hope that sometime in the future, we will be able to bring back such programme.
\n\u201cThe second programme was the subject of Pan Africanism for which we have invited a\u00a0 former Prime Minister of Jamaica, James Patterson, to open discussions.
\n\u201d When we learnt that Patterson would not be available due to accident , we chose a former President of Seria Leone, Bai Koroma, but then, with coronavirus, we had shelved that plan and\u00a0 reached out to a different set of discussants that we have today,\u201d he said.
\nThe celebrator \u00a0 also spoke on the theme of the symposium which was \u201cThe Place of Pan Africanism In An Emerging World Of Besieged Liberal Democracy.\u201d
\nThe former\u00a0 president recalled how African leaders used the instrument of the creation of the African Union (AU) to extend the frontiers of the concept of Pan Africanism to embrace Africans in the Diaspora.
\nObasanjo, who insisted that no two democratic systems in the world were the same,\u00a0 called on the African region to redefine its own democracy, adding that the concept of liberal democracy was a western coinage and idea.
\n\u201d Can we not have our own democracy that satisfies our needs?
\n\u201cI think we can define our own democracy in our own way to satisfy ourselves,\u201d he said.
\nHe, however, advised Africans to be ready for antagonism when they so decide to carve out their own definition for democracy, adding that the region must be steadfast.
\n\u201d We can, however, learn from the experience of a former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yeuu, whom they called called different names when he embarked\u00a0 on transformation of his country in the mid-70s.
\n\u201cWhen Singapore moved from third world to first world, they all shared and basked in the success of Singapore.
\n\u201d If we are able to do something not too far away from that but radical enough to meet our needs and we succeed, they will grudgingly accept us but if we do and we fail, we are on our own.
\n\u201cWe must realise that the world will not wait for us and they will not want us to succeed.
\n\u201d If we succeed, we would have taken something away, but if we fail, we will be on our own,\u201d he said.
\nBy NAN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Thursday, painted scary picture of how the out break of Coronavirus compelled him to jettison important programs intended to mark his 83rd birthday celebration. He disclosed that he was forced to make adjustments to his 83rd birthday programme\u00a0 because of the outbreak of the coronavirus which had spread across the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":18926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5775,7],"tags":[500,870,1200],"class_list":["post-25108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-news","tag-birthday","tag-coronavirus","tag-obj"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}