Daily Inspiration Quote by Olusegun Obasanjo

Obasanjo’s line flips the usual racial script by treating “blackness” and “whiteness” less as biology than as political identity - a move with real diplomatic bite. By declaring himself “black man inside and outside,” he stakes a claim to authenticity that isn’t just about skin color; it’s about solidarity, history, and the lived consequences of being read as Black in a world built around that reading. Then he turns to “you are white men on the outside” and refuses to let the audience hide behind complexion as a moral alibi.

The twist - “inside, you are Africans like me” - is both invitation and accusation. It invites white interlocutors (often Western leaders, expatriates, or descendants of colonial settlement) to accept a shared origin story and a shared responsibility. It also accuses them of selective amnesia: benefiting from Africa as a place of extraction, while treating Africanness as something to manage at arm’s length. Obasanjo makes “African” a category of belonging that can’t be reduced to phenotype, but he doesn’t make it frictionless; the phrase “like me” insists that kinship comes with obligations.

Coming from a Nigerian head of state shaped by postcolonial power struggles and international bargaining, the rhetoric is strategic. It’s meant to disarm paternalism and re-center agency: if you’re African “inside,” you don’t get to speak to Africa as a problem. You’re implicated in its future.