Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has warned Nigerian leaders against failing to fulfil the responsibilities attached to the offices they were elected or appointed to occupy.
Obasanjo said failure to deliver on a leadership mandate amounts to a sin against God and a betrayal of the people leaders are expected to serve.
He also cautioned leaders against believing they could escape the consequences of poor decisions and failures, urging them to acknowledge their mistakes, apologise where necessary and take concrete steps to correct them.
Obasanjo spoke in Abeokuta, Ogun State, while delivering a keynote address at the Leadership Empowerment International Conference (LEIC) Nigeria 2026 over the weekend.
The conference, organised by the Perspectives Leadership Development Institute in collaboration with the Olusegun Obasanjo Leadership Institute, was held under the theme, “The Gravity of Leadership Failure & Correction Methodologies.”
The former President described leadership as the most important factor determining whether a family, business, institution, state or nation succeeds or fails.
“If you are a leader, you are put here by God and by people to do what is right. And your failure to do what is right is a sin against God and against the people that we are supposed to be looking after,” Obasanjo said.
He warned that leaders who fail to perform their responsibilities and refuse to make corrections would eventually face the consequences.
“Don’t think that you will do it and get away. If you fail where you should not fail and you do not make adjustment or action, you will pay for it,” he added.
Obasanjo explained that organisations with similar resources and structures could achieve vastly different outcomes because of the quality of their leadership.
“You will find two institutions or two organisations that are very similar and one is doing well, the other is not doing too well. The difference is in leadership,” he said.
According to him, leadership failure can have serious consequences across all levels of society.
“A nation, leadership failure will mean that the nation is not making progress as it should. A family, the leadership failure in the family means that the family is not making progress as it should. Any human institution, any human organisation, leadership failure means great calamity,” he stated.
The former President further stressed that leaders must be willing to admit when they have made mistakes and take responsibility for correcting them.
“As long as you are active as a leader, you are likely to do things wrong. But what is very, very important is to make sure that when you do wrong, you appreciate that you have done wrong. And then you atone and make corrections,” Obasanjo said.
He added that leaders should not accept positions of responsibility if they already know they cannot meet the obligations attached to them.
“If you cannot carry out the responsibility of leadership, then don’t accept. If you accept, then do it as it should be done,” he said.
Obasanjo also rejected the tendency of leaders to justify poor performance by blaming problems that existed before they assumed office.
He questioned the relevance of such excuses, saying leaders should be judged by their ability to address the challenges they inherited.
“If I say that, yes, since I was born, Nigeria has been poor. If I am put in a position not to make Nigeria poor and all I can say is that since I was born, Nigeria has been poor, I wonder what I am saying to Nigerians,” he said.