A member of the opposition coalition, Salihu Lukman, has criticised President Bola Tinubu for “rewarding” governors, who largely mismanage and divert public resources for personal use.
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) Chieftain, speaking during a programme monitored by VoiceNews said despite evidence that some governors do not use humongous federal allocations for the development of their states, the president never stops approving large sums of money to sub-national governments.
Recall that on Tuesday, the United States Embassy in Nigeria revealed a report on how Nigerian governors splurge billions on renovating government houses despite the economic hardship in the country, occasioned by the removal of petrol subsidy.
“Such alleged lack of fiscal responsibility fuels inequality and erodes public trust,” the embassy stated.
Economists and analysts have attributed the harsh economic realities to the government’s twin policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of the foreign exchange windows.
According to him, the 23 APC governors, and their opposition counterparts in 13 states, have become arrogant and unaccountable to the people because they control party structures.
“Once we have a system where the structure of the party is subordinated to them, they will continue with this arrogance, and continue to be unaccountable and convert public resources as if it is their personal property.”
The former National Vice Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) added that the Tinubu administration has been more focused on admitting opposition governors to the APC without any structure of accountability to the people who elected them.
“For instance, when your recruitment policy in your party is blindly informed in a way that all you want is for people to come into your party without giving them the conditions that need to happen for them to be accountable to their people.
“As far as I can see, the objectives of many of them are to be where they are and not to deliver services,” he maintained.
Lukeman said the leadership of the APC betrayed the trust invested in it by party members. “In APC, we invested every trust in the leaders and at the end of the day, leaders betrayed that trust, and that is why APC is damaged today, whereby it is worse than the PDP.”
Speaking on the new opposition, he said the ADC has learnt from the mistakes of the APC and would do things better if the party produces the next president in 2027.
His words; “The ADC as a coalition, I see it as a platform for struggle. We have to engage our leaders. The mistake many of us make is to imagine that leaders are rational and, left on their own, they will do the right thing.
“Our objectives of forming the coalition is to organise it in such a way that if we produce the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and governance, all those people will be accountable to the party and the party will properly direct them to deliver services based on the electoral promises as provided in the manifesto of the party.”
