Obasanjo Slams Tinubu’s Debt Defence, Warns of Generational Burden

The former President says excessive borrowing threatens future generations, while warning that Africa could face another era of economic exploitation through artificial intelligence

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has criticised President Bola Tinubu’s position that borrowing is not leprosy, arguing that excessive debt poses a greater danger because its consequences could affect generations yet unborn.

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Obasanjo, who secured a landmark $30bn Paris Club debt relief for Nigeria during his administration between 1999 and 2007, said while leprosy affects an individual, unsustainable borrowing could burden an entire population across generations.

He spoke on Friday at the third Ajibosin Annual Symposium, held at the amphitheatre of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

The event was themed “Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Solve Grassroots Problems and Accelerate National Development”.

Tinubu was recently quoted as saying that borrowing was not leprosy, arguing that his administration had to work hard to repay whatever it borrowed.

However, Obasanjo dismissed the argument, questioning the country’s rising debt profile and the capacity of its leaders to manage the economy.

The former President also criticised the policy prescriptions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), arguing that the institutions were not established to prioritise Nigeria’s national development and prosperity.

Citing agricultural subsidies in Britain, Obasanjo recalled a conversation with former British Prime Minister James Callaghan, whom he said received government support for sheep farming.

He argued that it was contradictory for international financial institutions to discourage agricultural subsidies in developing countries while wealthier nations supported their own farmers.

Obasanjo also questioned why Nigeria should accept economic prescriptions from institutions whose policies, in his view, did not adequately reflect the country’s circumstances.

He said:

“How can Iyabo be the one who will tell me how I will run my home? These brilliant boys will package everything very well academically. They tell us, and we take it, lock, stock, and barrel, and we use it.

For a country of 250 million people, it is boys and girls who are not even married, let alone manage a home, who will tell us what we will do to manage our people, our country, and we swallow it, and we destroy ourselves.”

The former President also expressed concern over the depreciation of the naira, comparing its value against the dollar when he started his farm 47 years ago with its present exchange rate.

“When I started my farm 47 years ago, one naira to the dollar was one naira to one dollar 85 cents. What has Nigeria done in 47 years that we now have N1,500 naira to the dollar? What have we done?” he asked.

He questioned the knowledge and capacity of political leaders to address the country’s economic challenges before returning to Tinubu’s comments on borrowing.

“What do our leaders know, and what do they not know? From what they know, what can they do for us? For anybody to say debt is no leprosy is absolute nonsense. Debt is worse than leprosy, because leprosy destroys only one person. Debt destroys generations,” Obasanjo said.

Beyond the country’s debt burden, the former President warned against embracing artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies without understanding their implications.

He argued that innovations developed by powerful foreign countries could become instruments of exploitation if African nations failed to establish control over their use and development.

According to him, Nigeria must determine how artificial intelligence can serve its national priorities instead of allowing foreign interests to dictate the country’s technological and economic direction.

Obasanjo acknowledged that he did not possess extensive technical knowledge of artificial intelligence but maintained that technologies outside a country’s control could be abused against it.

“I don’t know too much technically about AI. But I know that anything that is not in your control can be abused against you,” he said.

Delivering his lecture at the symposium, historian and political commentator, Dr Umar Ardo, also warned that Africa risked becoming vulnerable to a new form of economic exploitation through artificial intelligence if it failed to control its data, technological infrastructure and intellectual property.

Ardo said artificial intelligence offered significant opportunities for economic transformation and national development but cautioned that adopting the technology without ownership, local capacity and adequate safeguards could reproduce the unequal economic relationships associated with slavery, colonialism and post-independence dependency.

He traced Africa’s economic history through successive periods in which the continent supplied valuable resources while foreign powers controlled the technology and systems used to extract and process them.

“For over three centuries, Africa’s principal export was human beings. The transatlantic slave trade carried roughly twelve million Africans across the ocean.

The technology of that era — sailing ships, navigational compasses, and firearms that enabled this trade — was not ours. We did not build the ships, set the prices or write the ledgers, though our men, women and children filled the cargoes,” he said.

Ardo argued that colonialism shifted the pattern of extraction from human beings to land and raw materials, including tin, coal, cocoa, palm oil, groundnuts, cotton, ivory and gold.

He noted that railways, steam engines, explosives and colonial administrative systems were deployed to support extractive economies in which African countries supplied resources and labour while foreign interests controlled much of the value chain.

According to him, the pattern continued after independence, with African countries exporting raw materials while importing finished products and relying heavily on foreign economies for technology, expertise and industrial capacity.

He cited Nigeria’s continued dependence on crude oil exports and imported refined petroleum products, as well as the reliance of cocoa-producing countries on foreign manufacturers for finished chocolate products.

Ardo warned that data could become another major commodity extracted from Africa without the continent receiving a fair share of the economic benefits.

“Now comes the age of artificial intelligence, which Africa is urged to ‘leverage’.

I do not dispute its arrival or its potential. I ask whether we have considered the terms of participation. Data may become the fourth commodity in this long history of extraction,” he said.

He added that data generated by Africans through their farms, hospitals, languages, businesses and public institutions was becoming increasingly valuable, while computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence models, intellectual property and profits remained concentrated outside the continent.

The historian maintained that African countries must build the capacity to own, develop and regulate their technological resources if they are to benefit meaningfully from the emerging AI economy.

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The discussions at the symposium therefore centred on two major development concerns: the need for responsible debt management and the importance of ensuring that technological advancement translates into tangible benefits for Nigeria and the wider African continent.