Former presidential aide Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed has faulted successive governments for Nigeria’s deepening security crisis, saying President Bola Tinubu has not done enough to halt the slide.
Speaking on Arise TV’s Prime Time on Friday, Baba-Ahmed blamed chronic leadership deficits for the country’s worsening insecurity and for growing international impatience with Nigeria.
He argued that the nation’s troubles have evolved since the Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009, describing today’s threats as more complex and varied than a decade ago.
He warned that foreign pressure or intervention would not provide a lasting solution and insisted that only decisive, accountable governance can restore order.
Baba-Ahmed said: “Well, you make the point that the situation has been consistent, consistently there, the US has perhaps run out of patience with Nigeria and therefore it’s taken on this hard line position. I’m afraid it’s not exactly the case. Nigeria’s circumstances hasn’t remained static.
“If you go back to 2009 when the first uprising of Boko Haram occurred to where we are today, the mutation of some of these problems and also the addition of new challenges, has changed the face of this conflict entirely. So we’re not really talking about the same Nigeria. Nigeria today is dramatically different from Nigeria within 10 years ago.
“So how so? Well, because the situation is more dire. These challenges are more serious. The threats are more varied. The sources of these threats are more varied by the situation.
“I think it’s our leaders who have become I mean, the only thing that has been consistent all along is that we have had bad leaders going as far back as perhaps after President Yaradua, all the way through the last 10, the last 15 years, this country has been poorly led.
“Everything that happens to this country, you can visit it on the doorstep of our leadership. This is a country, a great country, great people, which has been policed up by bad leaders, indifferent leaders.
“So if America feels we’re running out of patience, Nigerians will never get their acts together, it will continue this business of just saying, hey guys, there are enemies on their doorsteps. We don’t bite, and therefore they burst in and say, we’ll fix this country. America will not fix Nigeria.
“The last thing we need is an America breathing down our neck and making Nigeria weak because we come back from under. And that is not good for this country. Nigeria holds a huge strategic position in the geopolitics. In the Sahel, in West Africa, in Africa.
“I think the point is that Nigerians, the door was opened by our leaders. We are where we are today because our leaders have failed us. President Tinubu has failed us.
“Presidents before him, for eight years, had done absolutely, virtually nothing about the increasing place of insecurity in our lives. The president before him hasn’t done much either. And and here we are friends that should be saying to us, what can we do are saying to us, fix yourselves, or we fix you.”
Baba-Ahmed urged Nigerians to demand effective leadership and accountability from those in charge, warning that continued inaction would only invite more external pressure and deepen the country’s vulnerabilities.