Laide Raheem, Abeokuta

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has disclosed how the outbreak of coronavirus altered programmes lined up to celebrate his 83rd birthday.

Obasanjo, who disclosed this yesterday, during the final event of the birthday at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), Abeokuta, said international personalities, including the former president of Sierra Leone, Bai Koroma, scheduled to deliver a keynote address on Pan Africanism, his Liberian counterpart, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as well as the two Asian envoys to Nigeria (China and India), who were all invited for the event could not make it due to the ongoing prevalence of the virus globally.

The former president lamented the absence of the eminent personalities at the event, especially from Asian countries, who, according to him, had been specifically invited to discuss how Asian countries achieved socio-economic development ahead of Africa.

“Malaysia which was worst before we gained independence in 1960, South Korea which was below us, Vietnam which was in war and we looked at all these and we wrote a book. One of the things in the programme is to spend the day before yesterday and yesterday to examine how they (Asian Tigers) came up from where they were and what lessons have we learnt from them, but because of coronavirus, that programme was shelved.

“I do hope that sometimes in future we would be able to bring it up again because there is a lot to learn about what they have done and how they have done it,” Obasanjo said.

He, however, enjoined his audience to acquaint themselves with knowledge inherent in discussions on objectives and visions of Pan Africanism, which has always been used as platform for evolving and developing agendas relevant to the growth and advancement of African continent since 2007 when he left office as president.

While disclosing why symposium on Pan Africanism was made part of the birthday celebration, Obasanjo said: “Such topic was carefully arrived at by a body of professors having realised that the topic would have substantially addressed the matter of neglect of fate of Africans in diaspora as well as positions of the African economy as it relates to the whims and caprices of the global economic players.”

He explained that transformation of the African Union (AU) from the Organisation of African Union (OAU) established in 1963 was deficient at addressing and incorporating interests of the Africans in diaspora.

“Some people will be saying what has Pan Africanism got to do with us in Nigeria? We have the problem of insecurity; we have the problem of restructuring and all other problems, so what has Pan Africanism got to do with us?

“But I am saying Pan Africanism is different from African unity. It goes beyond African unity and to prove that, when our leader in 1963 established OAU, they did not recon with Pan Africanism as such to the extent that nobody outside the continent of Africa was considered to be part of the OAU,” Obasanjo said.