Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has submitted that a lot of things are going wrong in the country because President Muhammadu Buhari is ‘sleeping on duty.’
Obasanjo noted that he used to know Buhari as a military man when he worked with him, but the current Buhari who is the democratic President of Nigeria has fallen far below the standards expected from him.
Chief Obasanjo who made his mind known on Sunday in a virtual interview with academic and historian, Toyin Falola, said Buhari should wake up to his responsibilities.
Though Obasanjo noted that a President is not expected to know and do everything, the recurrent cases of general insecurity in the nation including cases of banditry, kidnapping, and other crimes particularly in the Northern part of the country where Buhari hails from leaves so much to be desired.
The former president submitted that from issues of the economy to foreign affairs, to security, to fighting corruption, Buhari needs to do more.
He said, “I thought I knew President Buhari because he worked with me. But I used to ask people that is it that I have not read him well or read him adequately or is it that he has changed from the Buhari that I used to know? I am not subscribing to the people who say we have a new Buhari from Sudan and all that nonsense.
“I know what I believed was his limitations and I have written about it –he wasn’t strong in economics, not all of us are strong in anything but you need to have sufficient knowledge of it for you to direct the affairs. He wasn’t particularly too strong in foreign affairs but I thought he was strong enough in the military.
“From his performance in his first outing as head of state, I thought he would also do well in fighting corruption. I did not know the nepotistic tendencies of President Buhari maybe because he was not exposed to that sort of situation when he worked with me.
“But with what I have seen now, I believe that maybe he will be thinking of a legacy. Maybe he will also learn from what has happened in recent times. If you are the commander-in-chief and banditry is taking place in your backyard, then you have to wake up.”
Meanwhile, the Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje has recommended the ban of the movement of cattle and herdsmen from the Northern part of Nigeria to other regions as a way of curbing the frequent farmer-herdsmen crisis in the country.
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Ganduje made the submission in Daura Katsina State while speaking with newsmen, noting that a law should be enacted to ban the movement as a way of ending the crisis.
The Governor noted that his administration is already building a Ruga settlement in Kano State located in a forest near Kano’s border with Katsina to prevent the movement of herdsmen with their cattle and prevent clashes with farmers when the cattle destroy the farmlands.
He noted that the settlement will have facilities such as a dam, artificial insemination centre, veterinary clinic, and houses for the herdsmen.
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