President Bola Tinubu has been urged by a section of the Pan-Yoruba socio-political group Afenifere to prevent the impending collapse of the nation.
The organization expressed this fear following its usual quarterly meeting in Isanya-Ogbo, Ogun State, and claimed that the policies implemented by the Tinubu-led administration since taking office last year are to blame for Nigeria’s impending complete collapse.
In a communique jointly issued on Saturday by Afenifere Deputy Leader, Oladipo Olaitan, and Deputy Secretary General, Alade Rotimi-John, the group said the state of the nation has left the people “perplexed,” adding that if the “ugly trend is not arrested, the country may collapse.”
Afenifere also noted that the majority of Nigerians are “troubled by the pervasive hardship, crippling hunger, unremitting insecurity in the land, runaway inflation, and massive unemployment, all of which have left the people worse off than they were at the beginning.”
The group also frowned at what it called the “reckless, obstinate, and indifferent attitude of the government to the long-term effects of the lack of forethought or purpose regarding the handling of the public revenue.”
The group decried some of the Tinubu administration’s “profligate predilection or inclination to waste resources,” stating that “$100 million or N240 billion as the purchase price for an Airbus A330 as a jet for the President and a further $50 million to retrofit is uncalled for.”
It noted specifically that the N950 million budgeted for the purchase of a new set of armoured Cadillac Escalade Limousine SUVs as befitting vehicles for the President, N21 billion for renovating a new mansion for the Vice President, N90 billion as subsidy for religious pilgrimage, and N10 billion to renovate the Presidential Lodge at Ribadu Road, Lagos, among others, give an insight into the “wasteful nature of the administration.”
“Afenifere is scandalised or shamed by the odium and poor international or global image which have attended these profligate or prodigal expenditures,” the group said.
“We are puzzled that a government can be so masterful at diversionary tactics just to lull the people to sleep and confuse them as they wake amid grave national circumstances and of a strident or sustained debate of its desultory or unmethodical handling of governance,” the statement added.
