Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, former political adviser to President Bola Tinubu, has criticised the current administration for failing to improve governance and the quality of life for ordinary Nigerians.

Speaking on Channels Television’s Political Paradigm programme aired on Tuesday, Baba-Ahmed said the administration had fallen short of public expectations for meaningful change.

Baba-Ahmed, also a former spokesperson for the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), pointed to the removal of the petrol subsidy as a major factor affecting citizens’ welfare. While acknowledging that reversing the subsidy removal is unrealistic, he urged the president to ensure transparency in the use of funds saved from it.

“So much waste, so much abuse of resources and corruption going on,” he stated.

He also called on Tinubu to tackle corruption, reduce poverty, invest more in infrastructure and social development, and take a firm stance on how public funds are managed, especially by governors in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Reflecting on Nigeria’s leadership since 1999, Baba-Ahmed offered a bleak assessment.

“Nigeria is a tragedy. Even though we have a democratic system, the key element has been missing: that element is the idea that people elect leaders to serve, protect their resources, and use their resources to build a country that is in the interest of the citizens,” he said.

He acknowledged that former President Olusegun Obasanjo had a relatively strong start, though his legacy was tainted by attempts to extend his tenure. Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, he noted, brought hope but was cut short by ill health.

He said, “(President Goodluck) Jonathan took over and ran the country aground. We fought against Jonathan because we felt Nigeria deserved better leadership than Jonathan. We didn’t realise that we were going to put in place someone who was not even to govern at all. Jonathan governed badly; President Buhari didn’t govern at all.

“Now, you have a president who started on a faulty foot and says: ‘I am going to become president because it is my turn’.

“Even if you forgive him for making that comment, two years into the leadership of President Tinubu’s government, we judge them by their record.

“They will tell you they are doing great with all the World Bank statistics, all the international ratings and everything but that’s not only the measures you measure a government; you measure by the way citizens live, and if that is the yardstick by which we are going to measure this administration, then clearly, the Tinubu administration has failed expectations that it was going to radically improve the quality of governance of President Buhari.”

According to Baba-Ahmed, the core issue with Nigeria’s democracy lies in selfish leadership.