A former governor of Ogun State, Chief Segun Osoba, has said that past public office holders since the transfer of power to civilian government, must be made to account for their activities in office. Chief Osoba said this during an exhibition of books written by Nigeria’s foremost Poet, and public commentator, Odia Ofeimun, tagged, “Special 40-Plus Book Exhibition held yesterday at the Agip Recital Hall of Muson Centre, Lagos. He said:
“Those who have held public offices in the civilian era should all come back and account for their stewardship, if you really want everybody to be accountable, I’m suggesting that the president should make all of us come back and account for whatever we did when we were in offices since 1999, since the return of civilian government. There should be thorough examinations of our actions, 2003 was not under Jonathan, so the probe must begin from 1999 because once you pull the root, the root will pull all the grass around.
“The modern day journalism is just to write, get byline and publish things that are not well researched and you don’t ask questions anymore, I’m not happy as a journalist. We have killed investigative journalism. For instance, since the last election, has anyone asked questions about the card readers that Jega introduced, what are the number of voters that the card readers read in each of the states, there are so many things to investigate.
We need to go back to investigative journalism to be able to educate our people thoroughly. “I’m not one of those who think that we are not reading, we may not be reading hard copies of books, but a lot of our children now go on internet and do a lot of reading. I recommend that the likes of Odia Ofeimun should not give up.”