Obasanjo Faults Leadership for Desperate Migration, Calls for Urgent Governance Reform in Nigeria

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has issued a stark warning regarding the state of national leadership, attributing worsening insecurity, graduate unemployment, and economic desperation to governance failures that are driving citizens to undertake perilous migration routes abroad.
​Speaking on Saturday at the Creative Africa Nexus Weekend 2026 panel titled “Lest We Forget”—an event organized by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) in Lagos—Obasanjo emphasized that African nations must confront the root causes pushing their youth toward irregular migration.
​Key Takeaways from Obasanjo’s Address
​Governance Failure & Migration: Obasanjo noted that lack of economic opportunity forces citizens to risk their lives crossing the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea. “If they have nothing here, they will look for whatever they can get anywhere else, and you can’t blame them,” he stated.
​Nostalgia vs. Current Insecurity: Reflecting on his return to Nigeria after military training in Britain in 1959, Obasanjo recalled traveling freely across the country day and night without fear of attacks or kidnapping—contrasting it sharply with today’s safety crisis.
​Youth & Graduate Unemployment: The former president stressed that governments cannot continue producing university graduates without creating job markets, warning that economic hardship drives otherwise productive individuals toward crime or desperate exit routes.
​Proposals for Continental Integration: Obasanjo revealed discussions with Ghanaian President John Mahama on a initiative to eliminate visa requirements among approximately 25 African countries currently offering visas on arrival, aiming for full intra-African freedom of movement over time.
​Diaspora Citizenship: He advocated for policies across all African states to grant automatic citizenship to members of the African diaspora seeking to settle on the continent.
​Focus on Reparations and Historical Exploitation
​The panel—which also featured former Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, and Jamaican scholar Prof. Paulette Ramsay—addressed African identity, reparations, and the legacy of colonialism.
​Prof. Ramsay, author of Lest We Forget: Slavery, Slave Trade, Colonisation, Emancipation and Reparation, called for reparatory justice that extends beyond financial compensation to include the repatriation of stolen African artifacts, protection of cultural heritage, and an end to resource exploitation.
​”Africa is not where it should be, and that Africa is not where it should be is substantially the responsibility of our leaders. It’s as simple as that,” Obasanjo concluded, reiterating that leadership accountability and institutional reform remain the ultimate solutions to curbing irregular migration and restoring stability.