President Olusegun Obasanjo says Africa requires a new crop of leaders, a new way of doing things and the support of development partners for accelerated socio-economic and political development.

“First, we must as African leaders and as African people admit that we have under-performed. We have done things wrong in the past. We have done what we should not have done, and we have left undone what we should have done,” Obasanjo said in an interview in Abuja.

He was reacting to a statement credited to World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, who visited Africa recently. At his concluding news conference in South Africa, after stops in Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Rwanda, Wolfowitz said: “There is a new leadership in Africa that is taking responsibility.That is why I agree with what President Obasanjo said to me, ‘Africa is on the move’. I feel like it is on the move and I hope the World Bank can help it move faster.”

President Obasanjo said for Africa to increase the momentum, “we must then identify what we have to do right, and no matter the odds against us, we must continue to do those things that we have identified we have to do and we must identify what we must not do.”

Obasanjo warned Africans not to succumb to Afro-pessimism propagated by “cynics and sceptics who say ‘oh yes we have seen it before and it won’t happen’. Well, if they have seen it before, this time they are seeing differently,” he added.

“They are seeing new leaders who are determined to move up, they are seeing new leaders who are keeping sleepless nights because they believe that those other countries that have made it have made it through the dint of their hard work and we too can make it,” he said.

He said Africans compared favourably with any other group of people in the world “in terms of intellectual capacity, in terms of knowledge, in terms of awareness, in terms of dynamism and in terms of value orientation.

“I would not accept that because I am a black man my brain is black. I will not. That is why I decided to fight vigorously until we saw the end of apartheid.”

President Obasanjo, however, stressed the need for the continent to carry its development partners along. “I have found that there is certain amount of goodwill out there, otherwise how do we get the leaders of the world agreeing to write off the debt of 14 low-income highly-indebted African countries?” he asked.

He was referring to the recent decision by the G-8 finance ministers to cancel the multilateral debts of 18 of the world’s poorest countries, 14 of them in Africa. While convinced that the world, generally, would want to see Africa do well, Obasanjo noted: “There are some that will not want to see us do well. But those that will not want to see us do well we should disappoint them by doing well.”

Vanguard,  June 27, 2005