Lukman Olabiyi 

Rights activist and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Chief Mike Ozekhome, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to be more nationalistic in his approach to governance. 

Ozekhome urged the Buhari led administration to be less sectional, less partial, nepotic, cronystic and prependalistic in handling the affair of the country.

The senior lawyer gave the advice in a statement issued yesterday. In the statement titled: “Interim blueprint of governance for President Buhari upon being sworn-in after an election that is still being hotly challenged and contested at the tribunal,” he implored the president and the All Progressives Congress (APC) led government to quickly take Nigeria out of the social, economic and political doldrums which they have sunk it.

“Buhari, before the much awaited Presidential Election Petition Tribunal judgement, must quickly take Nigeria out of the social, economic and political doldrums he and his APC government have sunk it. He should be more nationalistic in his approach to governance; less sectional, less partial, nepotic, cronystic and prependalistic. He should drop his stiff garb of suffocating military imperiousness and jackbootism and know that he is now supposed to be a democrat, subject to due process of law, with the attendant democratic safeguards.

“Buhari should allow rule of law to flourish, learn to obey court orders and respect citizens’ cherished and inalienable fundamental human rights.

“Buhari must, as president of a whole nation, drop his 97 percent five percent bellyaching mantra and endeavour to be less divisive and vindictive; and treat all Nigerians equally and as one whether they presumably voted for him or not.

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“He must stop promoting the superiority, suzerignty and sovereignty of his ethnic group over and above the other more than 350 ethnic groups in Nigeria. He must give democracy dividends to the Nigerian people through the provision of adequate security (Section 14 of the 1999 Constitution), robust economy and infrastructural development.”

Ozekhome also charged the president to think outside the box of how to fight corruption, stating that Buhari’s performance on anti-corruption fight has been woeful, selective, exclusionary and favouritism-based.

According to him, Nigeria is more corrupt today than ever before citing latest Transparency International Corruption Perception Index.

“Where corruption could be said to have been ‘democratised’ by previous governments before the current government, corruption under Buhari has been greatly ‘privatised’ by a few high-healed cabalistic elements.

“Thus corruption money unlike before now no longer circulate or sip down to the common people. It has been hijacked, privatised and held down by the jugular by these few elements at the precincts and corridors of temporary power.

“More importantly, Buhari should dust up the over 600 ground- breaking recommendations of the 2014 National Conference scripted by 491 delegates from across Nigeria (wherein I was a Federal Government delegate, and voted ‘cicero of the 2014 National conference’ and implement them. Some of the most important amongst them is the vexed but overdue issue of devolution of powers and restructuring of the unworking Nigerian contraption to become a truly fiscal and federal system of government.”