Former Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, has blamed successive Nigerian governments for the insecurity in the country, saying poor leadership over the last decade is largely responsible for the current state of insecurity.
Speaking on Arise TV on Friday, Baba-Ahmed said, ‘The situation is more dire, the challenges are more serious, the threats are more varied, the sources of these threats are more varied’.
He added, ‘The only thing that has been consistent all along is that we have had bad leaders going as far back as perhaps after President Yar’Adua. All the way, all through the last 10, the last 15 years, this country has been poorly led. Everything that happens to this country, you can visit it on the doorstep of our leadership. This is a great country, with great people, which has been poorly served by bad, indifferent leaders’.
Baba-Ahmed also assessed the performance of current and previous administrations on security, stating, ‘We are where we are today because our leaders have failed us. President Tinubu has failed us. The president before him for eight years had done virtually nothing about the increasing place of insecurity in our lives. The president before him hasn’t done much either. And here we are’.
He further addressed international perceptions, particularly from the United States, noting that the complexity of Nigeria’s security situation has evolved over the years.
‘If you go back to 2009, when the first uprising of Boko Haram occurred, to where we are today, the mutation of some of these problems, and also the addition of new challenges, has changed the face of this conflict entirely. We’re not really talking about the same Nigeria. Nigeria today is dramatically different from Nigeria of even 10 years ago’, he said.
Baba-Ahmed also commented on recent US claims and Donald Trump’s threat of military intervention, ‘America would not fix Nigeria. That is the last thing we need — an America breathing down our neck and making Nigeria weak because we can buckle under. And that is not good for this country.
‘The intelligence, the statistics are grounds for this action. It does not indicate that you’re dealing with a well-informed leadership that recognises the fact that they are dealing with a very complex country’.
The former presidential aide also spoke about Nigeria’s strategic importance, adding, ‘Nigeria holds a huge strategic position in the geopolitics, in the Sahel, in West Africa, in Africa.
‘It’s not the kind of country where you have a president who is used to getting his way, who says, ‘Okay, now give me Nigeria, bring Nigeria to the table, I’ll deal with it the way I want to.’ And the language of the Americans is not very encouraging’.
Baba-Ahmed’s remarks come amid comments by US President Donald Trump, who in a video posted by the White House alleged that ‘thousands and thousands” of Christians were being killed in Nigeria by what he called ‘radical Islamists’, describing the situation as an ‘existential threat to Christianity’.
Trump said, ‘We stand ready, willing, and able to save our great Christian population around the world. This is not going to happen. The killing of Christians is not going to happen’. He also said that the US was prepared to act, implying a possible military intervention.
The Federal Government of Nigeria, however, has rejected the allegation, describing it as false and misleading, and highlighted its ongoing fight against insecurity under President Bola Tinubu, stressing that efforts were ongoing to strengthen interfaith dialogue and community reconciliation in areas affected by violence.
