A former aide to Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Segun Ayobolu, who is currently for The Nation newspaper, has accused President Muhammadu Buhari of negating the change mantra the party stands for.<\/p>\n
Ayobolu, Tinubu\u2019s Chief Press Secretary and Special Adviser on Information and Strategy on Health to Raji Fashola the immediate past governor of Lagos on said Buhari\u2019s five month old administration had proven he is yet to provide the change Nigerians voted for.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre the All Progressives Congress, APC, and President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) aware of the great expectations their intense advocacy of change in the campaigns leading to the last general elections aroused among Nigerians?
\n\u201cAre they conscious of the fact that the greater the time lag between their formal assumption of office and the manifestation of their promised changes, the greater will be the growing frustrations of sections of the populace with the attendant increasing nostalgia for an idealised past?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is now nearly five months after PMB was sworn in following the sweeping victory of the APC at the polls.<\/p>\n
\u201cYet, the party is only just putting in place members of its Federal Executive Council (FEC) to assist the President in driving the machinery of governance.<\/p>\n
\u201cPMB claims he needed sufficient time to pick the very best men and women in terms of competence and moral integrity to work with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYet, impressive as the ministerial list he has sent to the National Assembly is, any President could have assembled the team within a month.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ayobolu lamented further that \u201cThe APC\u2019s mantra of change remains just a slogan. No one is sure of its concrete content.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes its idea of change mean just a shift of power from Dr. Goodluck Jonathan to PMB and from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the APC?
\n\u201cNigerians who voted for the party in droves expect more than that.This honeymoon can surely not go on forever, he said.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ayobolu pointed out that Buhari\u2019s first major error was not following Federal Character principle enshrined in the constitution for appointments.<\/p>\n
Giving examples, Ayobolu said Mahmood Yakubu\u2019s appointment as Attahiru Jega\u2019s successor as substantive Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, was unjustifiable and very insensitive.<\/p>\n
Quoting the Mohammed Uwais panel on electoral reforms, which proposed a wide range of reforms to strengthen the electoral process, he said \u201cOne of these, which the opposition parties at the time vigorously supported, was that the President would pick the chairman of INEC from a list of three nominees by the National Judicial Council NJC.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough, President Goodluck Jonathan from the South-south did not implement this reform, he at least picked a man of integrity from the north, Jega, as head of the electoral umpire.\u201d
\nExpressing shock, he said \u201cThe least one expected of PMB as a northerner was that he would emulate this worthy example and also pick an INEC chairman of intellect, character, experience and integrity from the South.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Buhari\u2019s executive cabinet list, he said \u201cI find it astonishing that in these fiscally and economically famished times; PMB apart from having obtained the approval of the Senate to appoint 13 Special Advisers has sent a list of 36 ministerial nominees to the Senate for confirmation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis makes a FEC of at least 49 members. It is unjustifiable.
\n\u201cThere is absolutely no difference between this and the PDP era of opulence and waste associated with the costs of governance. Where then is the change?\u201d<\/p>\n
On the Ministerial screening, Ayobolu noted that \u201cThere is hardly any difference between the utter lack of seriousness and rigour that characterised the screening of ministerial nominees under the PDP-dominated Senate of the past 16 years and the new APC-dominant Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf an incumbent party and President could be defeated in 2015, the same feat is not impossible in 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A former aide to Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Segun Ayobolu, who is currently for The Nation newspaper, has accused President Muhammadu Buhari of negating the change mantra the party stands for.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n