Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, a former political adviser to President Bola Tinubu, has criticised the current administration, saying it has failed to improve the quality of life of the average Nigerian and also the quality of governance.
“Clearly, the Tinubu administration has failed expectations that it was going to radically improve the quality of governance,” he said on Channels Television’s Political Paradigm programme aired on Tuesday.
Baba-Ahmed, a former spokesperson for the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), stated that the removal of the petrol subsidy by the Tinubu government has significantly impacted the quality of life for average Nigerians.
He said, though it was unrealistic for the current president to reverse the removal of the petrol subsidy, he should tackle the “wastage of resources” that accrue to state and local governments from the money saved from subsidy removal.
Baba-Ahmed said the president should take steps to increase accountability and governance across the three tiers of government.
He urged the president to tackle corruption and insecurity, mitigate poverty, devote considerable time to infrastructure and social development, and utilise his presidential power to ensure that money sent to governors, especially those of the All Progressives Congress (APC), is used judiciously.
“So much waste, so much abuse of resources and corruption going on,” he lamented.
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The former NEF spokesman said the presidents who have ruled Nigeria since 1999 have been worse than the previous ones.
“Nigeria is a tragedy. Even though we have a democratic system, the key element has been missing: that element is the idea that people elect leaders to serve, protect their resources, and use their resources to build a country that is in the interest of the citizens,” he said.
“Since 1999, every leadership that has taken over has been worse than the previous one. If you start from the first seven years of President (Olusegun) Obasanjo, I think, honestly, he did pretty well but as some versions of his critics say, he faulted his seven years by trying to see if he could get an additional term.
“President (Umaru) Yar’adua came into power and we had some kind of fresh air. Youngish president, visionary and strong but unfortunately, he didn’t last longer than two years.
“(President Goodluck) Jonathan took over and ran the country aground. We fought against Jonathan because we felt Nigeria deserved better leadership than Jonathan. We didn’t realise that we were going to put in place someone who was not even to govern at all.
“Jonathan governed badly; President Buhari didn’t govern at all.
“Now, you have a president who started on a faulty foot and says: ‘I am going to become president because it is my turn’.
“Even if you forgive him for making that comment, two years into the leadership of President Tinubu’s government, we judge them by their record.
“They will tell you they are doing great with all the World Bank statistics, all the international ratings and everything but that’s not only the measures you measure a government; you measure by the way citizens live, and if that is the yardstick by which we are going to measure this administration, then clearly, the Tinubu administration has failed expectations that it was going to radically improve the quality of governance of President Buhari.”
Baba-Ahmed lamented that the problem of Nigerian democracy is the selfishness of those who find themselves in various leadership positions.
“Nigeria’s leadership problem is a problem of those who have aspired to lead, who have had the opportunity to lead power and they have governed in their interest rather in the interest of the people who voted for them.
“If you have this kind of people as leaders, put them in the best country, if the leaders have this kind of values, they will do exactly what they are doing now,” he said.
