A former political adviser to President Bola Tinubu, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, has criticised the present administration, saying it has failed to improve the quality of life of the average Nigerian and that of governance.
Baba-Ahmed revealed this in an interview with Channels Television’s Paradigm Programme late Tuesday, claiming that Tinubu’s government’s elimination of fuel subsidies had a substantial influence on the quality of life of ordinary Nigerians.
He stated that, while it is unrealistic for the present president to reverse the withdrawal of the petrol subsidy, he should address the “wastage of resources” that state and local governments receive from the money saved by the subsidy removal.
Baba-Ahmed, who was also the former spokesman for the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), believes the president should take steps to improve accountability and governance across the three levels of government.
He encouraged President Tinubu to combat corruption and insecurity, alleviate poverty, commit significant time to infrastructure and social development, and use his presidential authority to guarantee that funds allocated to governors, particularly those of the All Progressives Congress (APC), are used wisely.
“So much waste, so much abuse of resources and corruption going on,” he lamented.
The former Tinubu ally said successive presidents who have ruled Nigeria since 1999, had been worse than the previous ones.
He said: “Nigeria is a tragedy. 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.
“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 failed 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 those are not the only measures you use to 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 bemoaned that the problem of Nigerian democracy was the selfishness of those who found themselves in various leadership positions.
He said, “Nigeria’s leadership problem is a problem of those who have aspired to lead, who have had the opportunity to lead and have governed in their interest, rather than the interest of the people who voted for them.
“If you have these kinds of people as leaders, put them in the best country; if the leaders have these kinds of values, they will do exactly what they are doing now.”
