Obasanjo: I spent 2 days with the Taliban

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has revealed that the quest to find a solution to the issue of global insecurity made him spend two days with some members of the Taliban sect.

Taliban, which has its stronghold in Afghanistan, is a radical group waging war against the government.

Lamenting on the spread of extremism, Obasanjo said the situation would have been under control if religious leaders had not failed in their responsibility of inculcating the right values into their followers.

The Nigerian leader was speaking at the 2016 national summit and 4th international colloquium organised by the Centre for Human Security at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta, Ogun state.

The programme was organised on the sidelines of the former president’s 79th birthday.

“I went to Syria when I was president of Nigeria. One of the places I was taken to was a refugee camp where those refugees have been since 1948, nothing has been done to them. How do you want their children to think?” he asked.

“In Norway, I met some members of the Taliban. We spent two days together. They are in the second echelon of the leadership, I was told the top ones will not come out and when we listened to them, we are bound to say yes, they can get something better than they were getting.”

He also blamed parents for not devoting adequate attention to the training of their children.

“If we do not get it right from home, we have started losing the battle. Communalism is going down the drain. There is popular saying that four eyes brought a child to the world and 200 eyes nurtured the child. But where are the 200 eyes of the community?” he asked.

“We do everything with impunity. We have been dealing with issues beyond us. We ought to prevent it. Prevention is even cheaper than cure. Can we prevent? Can prevention be part or best of our solution? We can also see where things are going down. We have home or houses, what happened at home? What do we teach? Moral training starts from home. Home is very important, but parents do many wrongs.”

He advised the international community to ensure fairness in the fight against insecurity, saying that is only way to sustain peace.