Baba-Ahmed: Buhari too slow — people sense a vacuum

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.”