Social crusader, lawyer and activist Deji Adeyanju has described the one year of President Bola Tinubu in office as a total failure, disaster and shame.
Tinubu would clock one year in office as president of Nigeria on May 29.
Rating the APC-led government in an exclusive interview on Tuesday, Adeyanju said the current administration is grossly incompetent and somewhat clueless about governance.
According to him: “One year in office of this government is a complete failure. The man (Tinubu) has not, contrary to insinuations before, during, and after the campaign, assembled competent people.
“He has turned out to be a total disappointment by appointing one of the worst ministers of power in the history of Nigeria.
“We’ve never had power cuts and outages like we have witnessed in the last year in the history of this country. In most parts of the country, people have to go for weeks without electricity. We’ve had the worst electricity hike since independence—an arbitrary hike. We’ve had multiple taxations of all kinds, almost immediately after the senseless removal of the fuel subsidy.
“We witnessed cries of petrol skyrocketing with attendant inflation, which was instant. The inflation has become astronomical.”
Adeyanju insisted: “Leadership is not rocket science. The president and his team have failed. The economic team is the worst since independence. A situation where you have a Minister of Finance who is grossly incompetent or partly clueless, who does not have knowledge of economic dynamics and a CBN governor who is just doing guesswork.
“It’s unimaginable that we spend billions defending the naira. Billions—not naira—billions of dollars, according to the apex bank. How senseless can one really be? A nation that borrows to pay its debt is spending billions, and the currency is still worthless.
“Completely worthless. So there’s practically nothing to celebrate. There’s nothing to praise or commend the president for.”
While he admitted that ministers of FCT and Interior are trying, Adeyanju, however, adjudged their ‘best effort’ as not good enough.
His words: “Yes, we have seen some reforms in the Ministry of Interior. We have also seen some roads in the FCT being tarred or refurbished. Refurbishment is not an achievement. We have seen a refurbishment of the Third Mainland Bridge.
“For someone to even think that the president will commission a refurbished bridge, was he the one that built it? What is he going there to commission? Commission a refurbished bridge? It doesn’t just make sense.
“That is the level Nigeria has descended into—the pit of mediocrity and cronyism. We have seen the worst form of ethnic jingoism in the government, where Yorubas have been appointed to key government agencies. The president has continued tribalism, and his close supporters justify it by saying, “Yes, Buhari did it; therefore, it should be continued.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever gotten this low before as a nation. It is really sad and regrettable that a nation so blessed with the best in every field is yet so lacking in basic stuff like leadership.
“We lack leadership at all levels. You can see some of the governors just dancing around the place and celebrating the refurbishment of roads.”
Adeyanju also stressed that Nigeria, at the moment, has no opposition leaders.
Said he: “In a situation where you have a serving minister, Wike, who controls PDP, what do you expect of PDP? The national chairman of the Labour Party has been accused by his own party. Even the presidential candidate of the party itself has been severely accused by people, whether online or offline, of describing the last election as a religious war. How can such a figure be a national uniting force?
“Atiku, the perennial contestant, says he’s going to contest to the grave. How can anybody take any of these folks seriously?
“So we have a vacuum. And the vacuum is not just a leadership vacuum; it’s an opposition vacuum in Nigeria. There’s a huge opposition vacuum that cannot be filled.”
The outspoken lawyer avowed that only a political revolution could fill the opposition vacuum.
He noted: “As currently constituted, the opposition is incompetent. It does not have the drive, the fire, or the firmness required to challenge the ruling party—an opposition led by the likes of Daniel Bwala and Reno Omokri of this world. What was anybody expecting from such an opposition?
“In simple terms, we do not have an opposition currently in Nigeria. What we have are pretenders pretending to be opposition, claiming to be opposition so that when elections come, they can raise money.”
The way forward, according to him, is to galvanise the nation for a political revolution, which in his words is “a revolution driven by people, not corrupt politicians.”