Obasanjo: Nigeria Needs Leaders With ‘Touch Of Madness’ To Move The Country Forward.

Olusegun Obasanjo, the former President of Nigeria, has remarked that the country needs a leader who is driven by passion and "a touch of madness" to bring it forward.

Obasanjo made the remarks while hosting Mohammed Hayatu-Deen, a presidential candidate for the Peoples Democratic Party, in Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State.

Former Minister Godswill Akpabio, who is running for President on the ticket of the All Progressives Congress, was also a guest of the former President.

According to PUNCH, Hayatu-Deen and his team arrived in Ogun State around 12:30 p.m. and immediately went into a closed-door meeting with Obasanjo, which lasted about an hour.

The former president said: “It is an agonising situation for you, obviously, and also for me. I want to emphasise the point that the Nigerian situation, as bad as it is, will only be put right by Nigerians at the forefront of our situation. So, Nigerians have to brace themselves up to do what needs to be done to put Nigeria back on the right path.

“And you are right in saying that, wherever you go now, one of the things you hear is that Nigeria is not on the table, but why shouldn’t Nigeria be on the table? What does it cost Nigeria to be on the table?

“I will say four things, of which I was reminded this morning. One is knowledge. The second is vision, what is the vision that we have? And if you have no vision, you may have eyes, but you are blind. And I believe that is part of our situation.

“The third is passion. And when you said, that you are involved in this, with a passion and I was telling some people this morning that, passion means madness, that you are mad about Nigeria, I am and I have no apologies for that because I have no other country I can call my own and I have no other country I can go to and say yes, I have come to live here.

“Passion means being mad about Nigeria, having a touch of madness, and I look at you (Hayatu-Deen) and say yes, you are mad about Nigeria too.”