Economic Policies: President Tinubu Behaving Like Civilian Dictator –Former Presidential Candidate, Ndu

Ndu, who spoke in an interview with SaharaReporters, labelled President Tinubu as a civilian dictator, warning Nigerians that the only way the country can possibly get out of the current situation is through mass participatory approach.

He also blamed Nigerians for allowing themselves to be deceived, noting that if the votes President Tinubu got during the election are added with the votes Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar and Rabi’u Kwankwaso got, they would not be up to 20 per cent of the country’s population.

He said, “People say that President Bola Tinubu is just in power a little over a year that he should be giving opportunity to turn things around but when they say this, I get worried because we are supposed to be practising party democracy and his party has been in power since 2015. The President was the leader of APC. So many of the top functionaries of the party were nominated by him, or tutored by him.

“For instance, an example is the current chief of staff who was then Speaker of the House of Representatives and so on and so forth. In any case, when he came on board, he said he was coming to continue from where Buhari stops.

“The point I am trying to make is that it is dishonest to say that he just met the trouble and he is trying to fix it because he has always been part of the team led by Buhari since 2015.”

Ndu explained that party democracy means that you are collectively responsible for the actions of your party, insisting that the President’s henchmen should stop “pulling wool over the eyes of Nigerians by saying he just came on board because he has always been there”.

He said, “In any case I am not even surprised that he is not able to handle the situation because shortly before the election I stated in a press conference that it is either he does not have the solutions or that he is not patriotic.

“If he had the solutions all along, he would have given the solutions to his party for them to implement even before coming to be president and if he didn’t have the solutions that means he didn’t have them. If he had them and he refused to put them onboard for his party to implement, that means he was not patriotic. You don’t get the solution simply because you become the president.”

He added, “In any case even during the electioneering to become president he consistently refused to answer any question. Remember even when he went to Chatham House when questions were put to him, he delegated others around him like El-Rufai to answer the questions for him. During rallies when he was supposed to address people on his programmes, he was holding a broom and dancing.

“So, I am not surprised that things are getting worse under him but I am not blaming him as a person, I am blaming all of us for agreeing to be so fooled not just by him but by the whole political system we are operating.

“If you put all the votes that Tinubu had in the election whether rigged or unrigged and add that one of Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar and Rabi’u Kwankwaso, they don’t come up to 20 per cent of the population of the people of Nigeria; and if you say as for those who voted it is still extremely negligible percentage. Democracy is supposed to be about mass participation.

“The solution to our problems can be found in a mass participatory approach. In other words, if we are trying to involve programmes for technological advancement, you must create a system that will outsource all our engineers, technologists whether at home or in the diaspora to contribute together, to collate and marshal out what should be our technological advancement blueprint likewise for health.

“Our medical doctors, pharmacists, all those in health industry should put heads together.

“This is the process we need to undertake to move this country forward. Nobody should pretend to be more Nigerian than the other. And nobody has any monopoly of knowledge. When all of us come together and work as one, that is only when we can move this country forward.”

On fuel subsidy removal, Ndu stated removal of subsidies on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) was the worst decision of the Tinubu administration.

He said, “To start with, even if it was supposed to be a best decision, it was removed in the wrong way.

“You remember that he removed the fuel subsidy even before he had a cabinet during his swearing-in that more than anything is the most eloquent, graphic explanation that this was a civilian dictatorship and if I were in his position, the basics thing my administration would have done is to first of all encourage all those young boys and girls who are operating what our country prefers to call illegal refineries.

“We send our air force, soldiers and navy to destroy to destroy their refineries. My administration would encourage them, regulate their products, make sure that they don’t pollute the environment, help them to get the crude oil at the cheapest possible price and suffocate everywhere with properly refined oil.”