Former Nigerian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Dr. Christopher Kolade has said that Nigerian politicians of today put personal interest above national interest.
He said that First Republic politicians were the direct opposite of their present colleagues.
Kolade stated this in an interview with Channels Television during the week.
The former Chairman of the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) noted that he deliberately stayed away from politics to avoid compromising his personal values.
“My view of politics is that the practice of politics can be very sensitive and one can begin to do things, begin to participate in decisions that conflict with the values, the standards, the principles that one believes. That has been my experience.
“I’ve never gone into politics because the way it was being practised, I thought I would not be able to be myself if I became a politician now.
“That may be simply my own weakness but this is the situation and so when I see politicians today and the way they behave, if I compare today’s politicians with politicians of the First Republic, for example.
“I can tell that my experience of the politicians of the First Republic was that they actually worked for Nigeria; they actually were serving the country;
“…they put themselves and their own interests lower than the national interests and some of them in order to serve the country well were actually imprisoned, they suffered hardships in order to get the country to where they thought it should go.
“I think that has changed. I believe that today many politicians, in fact most politicians that I know of, tend to put their own interests ahead of the national interest,” Kolade said.