Segun Ayobolu, a former aide to Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has come out to enthuse that President Muhammadu Buhari is not the change that Nigerians crave.
According to Point Blank News, Anyobolu who has also served as Special Adviser on Information and Strategy on Health to Raji Fashola, the immediate past governor of Lagos and currently works with The Nation Newspaper also stressed that in the five months of Buhari’s presidency, he is yet to prove that he is the right man for the job.
He said: “Are 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?
“Are 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?
“It is now nearly five months after PMB was sworn in following the sweeping victory of the APC at the polls.
“Yet, 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.
“PMB claims he needed sufficient time to pick the very best men and women in terms of competence and moral integrity to work with him.
“Yet, impressive as the ministerial list he has sent to the National Assembly is, any President could have assembled the team within a month.
“The APC’s mantra of change remains just a slogan. No one is sure of its concrete content.
“Does 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?
“Nigerians who voted for the party in droves expect more than that.This honeymoon can surely not go on forever.”
Ayobolu went on the state that Buhari has not followed the principle of Federal Character in his appointments so far, describing the appointment of Mahmood Yakubu as Chairman of the Independent national Electoral Commission as unjustifiable and very insensitive.
He also made reference to the Mohammed Uwais panel on electoral reforms which has proposed several reforms for the electoral process.
While making to the reforms, Uwais said: “One 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.
“Although, 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.
“The 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.”
Speaking on the president’s ministerial list, Ayobolu said: “I 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.
“This makes a FEC of at least 49 members. It is unjustifiable.
“There 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?”
He also had his say on the ministerial screening carried out by the senate: “There 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,” he said.
“If an incumbent party and President could be defeated in 2015, the same feat is not impossible in 2019.”
