Usman Bugaje, a former House of Representatives member, has said that President Bola Tinubu’s administration has been a tragedy to Nigerians in his one year in office.
Bugaje, featured on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday evening, said President Tinubu’s government has not solved a single problem in Nigeria but created more problems than it met.
He described Tinubu’s government as groping in darkness and added that it is unfortunate that Nigeria has no metrics to evaluate governance and compel leaders to scientifically present their achievements to the people.
Bugaje said, “For citizens and the people who have been in government, clearly the last one year has been a tragedy. There is no one problem they have been able to solve.
“I cannot see any other than no clue. I gave them the sense. They are feeling the pressure on the faces of Nigerians and perhaps they are trying to see how they can assuage this anger because the people are angry.”
He said since the administration came to power on May 29, 2023, “I have not seen one problem that they have solved”.
“If anything, the policies they started with have created far more problems than they found, and in this one year, they are clearly groping in the dark,”
he said.
He continued, “This is the time for them to admit and seek help from those who know. Nigeria is full of people with the experience, with the expertise. They may not be in your party, they may not even be in politics but this is the way many countries have been able to get out of their problems.
“What we are going through is not new. Countries go through these from time to time but what do they do, they draw from their resources, their intellectual resources, their administrative resources, the people who have experiences. This country is full of them but they (leaders) lock themselves up and they are not delivering.”
Speaking further, he said, “I feel uncomfortable discussing this without even defining what their metrics are. We as a nation should have by now developed metrics for evaluating governance. In the academic world, there are statistics.
“Every government should have come with a baseline, after one year, they would be able to say scientifically this is the production in terms of agriculture, what we found in 2023 and this last season, we have improved by number of these metric tonnes.
“In the area of security, these are the figures we would have improved. The first thing in the morning was about 20 people picked up by bandits right in Gwarinpa, in an estate.”
“If Abuja, with all the presence of the government, is not safe, this is a centre shock to many residents of Abuja. Other citizens in Sokoto, in Zamfara, in Benue, in Cross River, and wherever they are, are constantly being killed, being maimed, and displaced. We must be concerned.
“My point is, what I have heard so far is empty rhetoric that has not spoken to the problems on the ground. If you are talking about more money to the states, that is not your business.
“That is a revenue allocation formula. You are not doing a favour to anybody. You are simply implementing the revenue allocation formula. It is a law,”
he said.
