Daily Inspiration Quote by Olusegun Obasanjo

Obasanjo’s promise is engineered to sound technocratic, but it’s really a political signal flare: Nigeria is open for business, and the state is willing to rearrange itself to prove it. The phrase “as soon as possible” is the classic statesman’s time stamp - urgent enough to reassure investors, elastic enough to survive bureaucracy and factional pushback. It acknowledges a problem without naming villains: the “obstacles” could be corruption, red tape, opaque licensing, erratic regulation, or a legal system that can’t reliably enforce contracts. By keeping the list vague, he avoids declaring war on any specific entrenched interest while still implying he knows exactly what’s broken.

“Reexamine our laws and policies” frames reform as rational housekeeping, not ideology. That matters in a country where economic liberalization can be read as capitulation to foreign pressure, especially in the long shadow of IMF-era conditionalities and post-military transitions. “Genuine investment” is the tell: he’s drawing a line between capital that builds factories, jobs, and infrastructure and the kind that merely extracts value, launders money, or rides a short-term commodity spike. It’s reassurance to domestic audiences that courting investors won’t mean selling the country cheap - and reassurance to serious investors that Nigeria wants long-term partners, not quick opportunists.

The subtext is reciprocal. The government is asking for patience and confidence; investors are being asked to believe that reforms won’t be cosmetic. In a climate shaped by policy reversals and credibility gaps, the sentence functions less as a plan than as a trust exercise.