Hardship: Nigeria Needs Bold Leaders To Confront Challenges — Akande  

Former presidential spokesman and current TV Host, Laolu Akande, has said that Nigeria needed bold leaders to confront the country’s multifaceted challenges, especially security and economic problems.

He made this known on during ‘My Take’ segment of his TV show, ‘Inside Sources with Laolu Akande’, aired on Channels Television on Friday, which normally opens the weekly programme.

According to him, leaders must be honest and courageous to overcome the challenges in a country.

“The problems as of today, the widespread hardship in the land and the menacing insecurities require courageous leadership at the very top. Our leaders must be bold enough to fire appointed public officials who don’t deliver on their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

“We have seen in this country how lack of consequences and impunity have created new problems and made old ones worse.

“For example, we have seen how we have been fighting insecurity for decades now and when it seems we’ve solved it at one point, it comes in another form. The problems re-emerge everywhere,” he stated.

Akande progressed, “There have been claims of collusion of corruption in certain agencies, our leaders should not be shy to thoroughly investigate, discover what is really happening and punish those responsible for the corruption and collusion if that is established.

“How is it possible that more than half of the oil lifted in Nigeria for instance is being stolen and no one has been caught or punished in several years?

“As a nation, we are struggling to meet up with our OPEC quota. OPEC cut Nigeria’s quota to 1.38 million barrels per day from 1.78 million bpd because for years, we have failed to meet our quota.”

Akande added, “A President or a governor or elected senator or assembly member is no use, in the long run, if he or she fails to use the big stick against those holding our commonwealth down. Our leaders must be bold enough, honest and forthright to draw a line in the sand on the issue of corruption. It requires boldness. Corruption is corrosive. A former President said if we don’t kill it, it will kill us.

“In 2015, many Nigerians thought that former President whose campaign spearheaded the ‘Change’ narrative would actually bring the change. I served under that administration but that has not happened wight years after. Our leaders who made the promises are still grappling at the straws. Corruption is worse, economy is biting, insecurity is relentless. We seem to lack the bold leadership to look at the problems eyeball to eyeball and say, ‘No more’.

“But Nigerians have given the same set of leaders – the APC, who made that illustrious promise of ‘Change’ in 2015, another chance now under a new President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who would have spent nine months in office at the end of this month.

“The burden that President Tinubu is carrying is heavier than that of President Buhari and it is important that is said because now President Tinubu is not just carrying the burden of promise but he is carrying the burden of truncated hope. And good a thing he has rightly named his agenda Renewed Hope.

“Nigerians have placed so much expectations on the promises and now they are wondering how come they believed a lie.

“So, it is up to President Tinubu to show that those promises made in 2015 were no lies. And that is why we are appealing to him today and all those in authority that the government be it executive, judiciary or legislature, it’s important to apply courage and boldness. The situation we are facing today is worrying and many of us still hope and pray that our leaders can summon the required courage to surmount the conditions and to deal with the contradictions especially in agencies in CBN & NNPC, two of the most critical institutions that must be thoroughly reformed if our economy is to come out of what seems to be a doldrum.

“The 1999 Constitution as amended may have defects but it has already invested enough powers in the authority of the President and the governors, to enable those in the offices to act with courage, especially the President.

“There is still enough time; we still has three years to go for this tenure. The question is- how courageous would we say this our current set of leaders were at the end of the day?”