THE long-awaited Inauguration Day 2023 has arrived! Outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari will hand over power to incoming President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at Eagle Square, Abuja. Today is also a public holiday to mark the change of batons at the federal and state levels.

After today’s fanfare, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima must quickly settle down for serious governance. Propaganda aside, the APC Federal Government under Buhari failed to tackle the problems facing this country.

Indeed, many of them worsened under his watch, mainly because he approached governance with the wrong mindset of ethnic and regional bias, and chased real and imaginary enemies with the maximum powers of the state.

Tinubu must open his arms and bring all Nigerians on board, including those who are still hurting from the Independent National Electoral Commission’s, INEC’s, woeful handling of the 2023 general elections. He must run an inclusive government, giving full expression to Section 14(3) of the Constitution (As Amended), which directs the use of the Federal Character Principle to give all sections a sense of belonging.

It also calls for a mature and patriotic application and communication of government policies and programmes by officials. The time for the campaign is over. The use of cheap propaganda and provocative rhetoric should be discarded. If the government deploys its spokespersons for a fight, there will be wars. Who will that benefit?

Tinubu’s manifesto and campaign promises notwithstanding, we believe that the Three Point Agenda (Security, Economy, and Anti-corruption), incompetently handled and largely unsolved by the Buhari regime, is still very relevant. It should be a strong starting point.

Tinubu must come up with a more effective approach to removing armed hoodlums and terrorists from our ungoverned spaces. These include Boko Haram/ISWAP, bandits, armed herdsmen, and unknown gunmen. Separatism should be handled with diplomacy, tackling the problem at its root causes.

The economy should be given over to experts, as former President Olusegun Obasanjo did, with strong with strong leadership guidance focused on

achieving results. Our vast, untapped agricultural resources must be unleashed for food security and foreign exchange earnings. Massive industrialisation must resume to employ our teeming youth.

Tinubu’s government must invest massively in the social sector, especially education and health, to end perennial strikes and reverse brain drain. Our leaders must resume educating their children in Nigerian schools and getting them treated in Nigerian hospitals.

We call for massive devolution of powers to the states and the consequential rejigging of the federal revenue allocation formula to make the states more self-sufficient. The states are the workshops of the nation. Devolution of powers will help close up ungoverned spaces and rid them of undesirable elements.

We wish the Tinubu administration a peaceful and successful reign. But as it lays its bed, so it shall lie on it.