Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, spokesman of the Northern Elders Forum
(NEF), says President Muhammadu Buhari’s governance style is too slow and
Nigerians cannot wait for him to fix the county at his own leisure.
Speaking when he featured on Arise Television on Wednesday,
Baba-Ahmed said some key parts of the country need to be fixed before we get to
2023, else there will be “too massive problems” by then.
He said if he had the opportunity of sitting with the
president to discuss the nation, given the state of things, he would tell the
president to wake up to his responsibilities as the country is falling apart.
“If I have an opportunity to speak with the president, I
will say: ‘Sir, please wake up and smell the coffee, this country is falling
apart,” Baba-Ahmed said.
“It is in very serious danger, it is going down under your
watch. You swore in 2015 and again in 2019 that you will protect citizens, the
territorial integrity of Nigeria. Sorry, sir, you are not doing that, doing it
well or you are not doing it at all. And one of the things you should do is to
call about 200 to 500 Nigerians, without any preconditions, and say: ‘ladies
and gentlemen, I believe that this government will benefit from some quality
advice in terms of the way forward.
“Two, take your governors more into confidence, speak to
them. They are very important people. They have responsibilities under the
constitution and they are able to carry out those responsibilities particularly
on matters of security. What do you want? What can we do together? What can I
do for you and what can we consider a legitimate idea or a crazy idea?
“Thirdly, please ask real questions about what is going on
with the security in this country. Something is wrong. You keep changing things
but we see the same result. We are becoming insecure by the day. Either it is
your attitude as commander-in-chief of the armed forces or the people you trust
to defend and protect us. There must be something about the security that you
and the people who are fighting this country don’t understand.
“Why are we being so insecure? Why is it not possible for
Nigerians to deal with banditry, kidnappings? These things 2,3 years ago do not
exist. Is anybody asking these questions? Is it that you have this harmony in
your security agencies? Do you have a way of finding out because we don’t have
the time for you to fix this country at your own leisure and the rate you are
going, you are too slow and people are smelling a vacuum around your government
and this is why you see people saying we don’t want to be part of Nigeria.
“That’s an expression of opinion. When these opinions
intensify and become popular as we are beginning to see in some parts of the
south-west, south-east. You now have citizens who are now legitimately
beginning to think this country represents a threat to us, we don’t want to be
part of this country.
“What happened to the country, to the oath you took to
protect Nigeria? Those are the kinds of questions I will ask Mr president.
Hopefully, he will have some answers and if he doesn’t, the solution will be
asking those who know.”
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