By Dapo Akinrefon

OTUNBA Gbenga Daniel, a  former governor of Ogun State, in this interview, says Nigeria’s value system needs to be revamped if the nation is to move forward.

The country is celebrating 55 years of independence, what went wrong and how can it be remedied?

I think that our value system has collapsed and we need to find a way of getting back our value system. We may not get it the way it used to be because population explosion has contributed negatively to it.

The first problem was when the issue of odd and even started. You will ask what am I talking about? Then, they would say you can only go out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays if your vehicle is odd number and even numbers:  Tuesday,  Thursday  and  Saturday  but everybody can doSunday.

Then, Nigerians said well, let me go and get two cars. We are all guilty, I inclusive because we now have people with a dozen cars in their garages. Some can be justified but most cannot and that is when this rat race to the rapid destruction of the country started in a way that can be vividly described. When we were young, a car is a status symbol, the few people who had cars in the community know themselves and our fathers did not have two cars.

I think that basically, we need to re orientate our value systems. I cannot prevent to say that it is going to be easy because this has happened over the years and for the children who are coming, it is even much worse because of what they have seen. I think we need to start from somewhere, we need to re orientate our value systems and part of what we need to do is to stop celebrating filthy locker and it can be done. When people learn to scorn people who have stolen in the society because many years ago, there had always been thieves, but they are not celebrated, they are scorned in the society. Even if you are a thief and you had money, people will know you in the society that he has money but he is a thief and parents do not allow their children to go and marry such thieves. They are not celebrated in the society, they are scorned. They can hardly walk free, they move at night because they are thieves, so that is the height of the value system that we have lost.

In the same way, if somebody is wealthy, we should know the source of their wealthy; so if somebody all of a sudden just comes and you cannot explain the wealth, you scorn them.

I had an opportunity to go to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, they have not gone crazy like us here, there is sanity. They do not have a lot of money in Lusaka, most people do not know that Shop-rite is owned by Zambeef and not the other way round. What is Zambeef? It is Zambia beef, the only thing that drives the economy of Zambia is livestock and because they wanted to be selling their beef, they founded Shop rite; so they own Shoprite. People think it is the other way round.

So, if people can use beef money to put Shoprite all over the world, what have done with our oil money? It is all about orientation and value system and stoppage to all these armed robbery contracts that is awarded everywhere.