By Eberechi Obinagwam
Media consultant, Dr Chidi Amuta said that the past eight years of former president Mohammed Buhari was the most disastrous period of Nigeria’s history.
Amuta was responding to Rotim Ameachi’s praise to Buhari’s government at TheNiche’s annual lecture held on Thursday at Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, (NIIA), Lagos.
The former minister of Transportation, Rotim Amaechi earlier as guest speaker of the lecture said Buhari believed government is about infrastructure.
According to him, Buhari did not have money to achieve what he wanted to achieve in terms of infrastructure.
But, Amuta reiterated by asking what is infrastructure without security. He said he does not care what the speaker has said concerning Buhari, insisting that his reign was the most disastrous period in Nigeria.
According to him, everybody has a better tomorrow but in Nigeria, our yesterday seems better than today. “Other countries are using their AI to develop their country but our young people are using their own to learn how to do rituals and kill.”
For the way forward, he said, people need to speak in one voice.
Award winning broadcaster, Funke Treasure, has argued that Nigeria’s problem can be located in the attitude of followers who enable the bad leaders.
Treasure, who spoke as a discussant at TheNiche’s annual lecture as a panelist said: “The followers are the enablers of bad governance and bad leadership. We are just waiting for our turn to perpetuate the circle of corruption.”
She said to fix Nigeria, attention must be paid to the followers.
“A look at the election held in Nigeria, it was driven by personalities than issues. They wrestled in their campaign and even abandoned traditional media to the use of social media. If we look at the presidential election of 1993, we could remember the slogans, the songs. But that of 2023 campaign, what can we remember? Ethnicity.”
Former governorship candidate, and ex-president and CEO of Transnational Corporation of Nigeria PLC, Valentine Ozigbo, said he is tired of talking about Nigeria’s problem, but disagreed with Funke Treasure that the problem of Nigeria lies with the followership.
According to him, leadership is Nigeria’s most key problem because they set examples that we fellow. He said: “We should be talking about how to make progress as a people in Nigeria. It is important that we do not give up our hopes because when hope is gone, all is gone. There is certainly hope for Nigeria,” he added.
He urged Nigerians to focus more on what we would do to get it right. “The elders should be remorseful about the past so that young persons will know the way to go,” he said.