Guardian

FORMER President Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday lamented the decline in moral values, hard work and integrity among youths.

To address this, he opined that the youths be exposed to biographies and records of works of the nation’s heroes, saying this would go a long way in helping them in their pursuit self- advancement.

Obasanjo, who spoke at the formal presentation  of the biography of a late university don and industrialist, Prof. Ayo Ogunsheye titled, ‘Ayo Ogunsheye: The workers’ economist’, maintained that exposing the youths to records of life and service of notable personalities in the country could encourage them to be serious.

The former president who extolled the virtues of Ogunsheye, said: “I want to urge family members of good Nigerians whose records we like to have but we have not had, to work towards documenting their history and achievements.

“This will help in putting right the history of our country. It will also help to impact on the younger generation who will be the leaders of tomorrow. It is necessary particularly now that we have a country where anything goes. The moral value was very high in the country in not so distant past.”

The former president stressed further that “by remembering men and women of integrity in the land, we would have helped in moving this country on the part of restitution and turn it from the status of anything goes.”

On the late Ogunsheye, he said: “As Head of State of this country, I was able to bestow the national honour on him. One of the people we heard about in the 1950s was Prof. Ayo Ogunsheye. The people we looked forward to then were the people we read about and he was one of them.”

On his part, the Vice Chancellor of the  University of Ibadan (UI) Prof. Isaac Adewole, said: “Professor Ogunsheye blazed the trail to show how academics can impact on the private sector. Before he left the University of Ibadan where he was the first Dean of Faculty of Education, he had nurtured the Department of Adult Education to a fully developed department.”

Ogunsheye’s wife and author of the biography, Prof. Adetowun, lamented what she described as the craze for wealth in the land.

She said the book was written to impact the lives of the youths. “I want to use his life to encourage the youths to do good. I want the youths to see that God blessed the nation with men that toiled for the country.”