Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said former governors contributed to the economic woes afflicting the nation by opposing his government’s efforts to save for the rainy day when the price of oil was higher. Obasanjo, who spoke at the 2016 World Pension Summit in Abuja, said at the event that, “I remember when I was in government and I told, particularly, the governors, ‘please let us save for the rainy days.’ They said no! There was no rain at that time, now that the rain has come; there is nothing we can fall back on to cushion us.”
On the pension funds, Obasanjo said, “One of the things that make me very happy in the pension scheme is that in the last five years, when almost everything goes, concerning public funds, pension funds remain sacrosanct. I believe that the pension funds are something we must preserve, no matter what we do. We must also find a way of using the pension fund in our development, particularly in infrastructural development. They are examples we can look at all over the world. For instance, in housing, Singapore is a good example where they have used their pension fund to make sure that there are no Singaporean who do not own a house. There is no reason why we cannot tow that line.”
