Buhari cannot continue to operate the same way he did in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and today – Baba-Ahmed

Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, President Muhammadu Buhari’s Chief Returning Officer in the 2015 Presidential election, former Secretary of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and former Federal Permanent Secretary has said that poverty in Nigeria is rising and rising at an alarming rate.

Baba-Ahmed speaking in an interview with the Sun said that President Muhammadu Buhari cannot just continue to work and operate as if everything is normal.

He called on the President to improve the quality of people who give him advice; he has to improve his personal commitment..

He went on to say that President Buhari has been elected twice and he should justify the confidence Nigerians gave to him for having voted twice for him and there is no other better time to demonstrate that commitment to the popular will of the people than now. We cannot continue to operate the same way we did in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and today.

He said: ‘I don’t see an existing level of competence that can cure the current challenges of this administration, particularly in the areas of our security apart from the insurgency they said has been defeated.

You have massive insecurity in many parts of the North, Northwest, North-central and the South.

The people are facing very serious challenges.

The more you create opportunities around it the more it spreads. Secondly, the economy is in recession. Thirdly, poverty is rising. It is rising at an alarming rate.

President Buhari needs to ramp up the level of competence of this administration. He cannot just continue to work and operate as if everything is normal. He has to improve the quality of people who give him advice; he has to improve his personal commitment.

He has to operate with better ideas. Buhari has to look out for people who mean well and who will give him better advice to see his way through in improving this country because what we see is that the only agenda is damage control and you don’t do damage control with people who do the damage.

You put them aside and get the people who can actually control the damage.

So, I don’t see that competence. About outsourcing, I don’t know. The truth of the matter is that 90 per cent of the people who are with him today have been with him all along and the best way to judge whether they are working well or not is to look at the worth of their work.

Of course, people can call themselves whatever they want to call themselves, but what Nigerians demand is that the president has been elected twice and he should justify the confidence Nigerians gave to him for having voted twice for him and there is no other better time to demonstrate that commitment to the popular will of the people than now. We cannot continue to operate the same way we did in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and today.

The chances are mounting and the leadership needs to overhaul its entire approach, its mindset and the key people who can actually assist him in running this country.