The Northern Elders Forum (NEF) said President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration must hasten to provide relief to millions of Nigerians who are facing imminent starvation and total loss of any means to earn an honest living.
In a statement signed by the director, publicity and advocacy, Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, and made available to LEADERSHIP in Abuja, yesterday, the group noted that amounts being handed over to state governors to design palliatives are unlikely to make the type of impact that should keep hungry and desperate population patiently waiting.
The Northern Elders said the administration must, at all cost, avoid considering its vision and plans of our future as a country as a done deal, adding that a population convinced that its fate has been designed and sealed by an all-knowing leadership is very difficult to govern.
The group therefore advised the Tinubu administration to cultivate the values of respect for the citizen, humility of the leader and a willingness to build flexibility into policies as great virtues that should serve it and the country well. The group also advised fellow citizens to be patient with the administration, and, at all cost, avoid illegal actions that will merely make lives poorer and more insecure.
Furthermore, the group said that what responsible Nigerians owe our democratic process is to encourage a healthy respect for those who, going by our constitution, have powers to lead the country right now.
“The judicial process also deserves encouragement to live up to its mission, and efforts to taint its image for partisan or other interests must be condemned. Second, our Forum recognizes the challenging circumstances under which the Tinubu administration assumed responsibility to steer the country away from further damage.
“What we owe our leaders at this moment are prayers, encouragement and counsel, not hasty conclusions and condemnation. Finally, the Forum has remained sensitive to the value of constructive use of time and circumstances, particularly in the face of unprecedented hardship under which Nigerians live today.
“It has become necessary, nonetheless, to speak on a number of important issues, so that the leadership and citizens will find some common grounds as they contemplate the next few steps. Now that President Tinubu is putting together a cabinet, the Forum hopes that Nigerians will see improvements in the manner decisions and plans of the administration are being handled,” the group said.
The elder statesmen said most Nigerians do not need convincing that the country had been reduced to a very sorry state by the last administration, and sacrifices and informed policies and decisions will need to be made to make a transition to a more productive economy, more secure communities and a more united country.
“We believe that the administration has erred in embarking on major decisions before it even took its first faltering steps. Attempts to correct mistakes have not been very successful, and these have been made worse by the barrage of plans and policies being hinted at, which will make life even more intolerable for the Nigerian. Where efforts have been made to correct mistakes, they appeared too hastily decided and will, in the long term, do little to relieve the desperate challenges of daily living of Nigerians.
“On the whole, the first few weeks of President Tinubu will be recorded by history as the act of a leadership that made bad situations considerably worse, and fails to explain why. The Forum prefers to believe this is not the intention of the administration, but it shares the agony of the citizen whose life has taken a major turn for the worse in the last few weeks,” the group added.
The group claimed that Nigerians know that the virtual civil war going on between anti-corruption and security agencies is related to attempts to bury the past, or create its seamless entry into more of our lives, adding that the administration must take a firm grip over efforts to interrogate the past and make it account for its abuse of our trust and our commonwealth.
“Nigerians will be more amenable to tolerating hardship if they see a genuine effort by the administration not to draw boundaries around what can be asked of those who were responsible for our current state. Then, the administration should vigorously attempt to assure Nigerians that we are not being processed through questionable economic philosophies and policies designed by people far removed from our desperate existence; people who are not accountable to Nigerians for the value of their advice,” the group said.
