What Buhari Failed To Learn From Obasajo’s Govt – Bakare

The overseer of the Latter Rain Assembly, Tunde Bakare, has explained why some Nigerians are unhappy with the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government.

Bakare, in an interview aired in Calgary, Canada said Buhari appointed unsuitable persons to fill in certain positions in his cabinet.

He lamented that the Minister of budget, and national planning, Udo Udoma, who graduated as a lawyer, has no business heading the ministry.

He, further noted that former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s government achieved a lot because he appointed the best and brightest minds from across the world in his cabinet.

He, however, said Buhari’s political party, All Progressives Congress, was responsible for the situation as it was filled with “a union of strange bedfellows.”

According to the cleric, Buhari did not appoint ministers for six months because there was no money to pay them.

He said, “In Nigeria, what I have found out is we put square pegs in round holes, and round pegs in square holes. For example, the person in charge of budget and planning is a lawyer.

“What experience has he gotten other than federal character? You can begin to look at each ministry the same way, and the civil service that is supposed to be the memory bank of government, they’ve promoted mediocrity.

“In Britain, in America, they go to Oxford, they go to Yale, they go to Harvard, and attract the best brains into civil service to formulate policies. 25 years down the road, we take the relics of society, the dropouts and we bring them in, and we expect to outperform those who have invested in those critical sectors of human capital development.

“What percentage of our annual budget goes into education, and what percentage has gone into grass cutting and cutlery? When it was made public that there were no sufficient drugs in the Aso Villa clinic, the nation should have known where their health is.

“The allegations by the Nigerian public is that those around the president are also stealing, and some names have been mentioned. You cannot be a clean man surrounded by rogues, if you don’t deal with those rogues, they would colour you with the same tar,” Bakare added.

“Development under President Buhari has been slow because as he said, he inherited an empty treasury. For six months, he could not appoint ministers because there was no money to pay them, and little by little, thank God, oil picked up.

“But a person like Obasanjo will now attack him and say, rightly, the price of oil had fallen completely and I met an empty treasury but I didn’t give excuses, I worked.

“But the difference is this, Obasanjo assembled the best, the brightest from across the nations of the earth, economists that knew their onions, to begin to help steer the affairs of the nation, and that is less seen in this administration.”