Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed was until recently a Presidential Adviser and a former spokesman of the Northern Elders’ Forum. In this interview on Channels Television, he spoke on his resignation and why President Bola Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) should feature energetic younger elements in the next elections BIYI ADEGOROYE reports

We found it a contradiction when you took the appointment as Political Adviser to the President, given your position as a former spokesman of the Northern Elders’ Forum and brother to Peter Obi’s running mate. Why did you join President Tinubu’s government, given your position and views in the past?

I joined Tinubu much after the elections at the behest of the Vice President. But before then, a lot of people, including the Northern Elders, told me don’t go. But I saw it as a national assignment the same way my brother saw his Vice-Presidential aspiration. I accepted it as a national assignment.

Who offered you the job?

The Vice President did, but he had to get the consent of the President before I became an adviser. The Vice President facilitated my appointment and the President approved my appointment, otherwise, I would not have been an adviser.

And that was against the run of play, your family on the one hand and what you have represented politically in the past. Hasn’t that caused a kind of distrust between you and some of your family members?

No. not at all. Look, working for a government, especially the Tinubu government that has inherited a messed country, and joining the government was the most strategic thing anyone could do. You cannot just turn your back on an administration that says ‘come and help’ the country out of the damage that he inherited.

I was one of the foremost critics of President Buhari’s government, and if a government takes over from President Buhari and says come and help us to fix the country, you couldn’t possibly say no. I cannot in fact be a critic for life. I participated actively in Buhari’s government. I was Chairman of his party for four years in my state, long before he became president. So, I became an outspoken critic when I came to the realization that a few months into the presidency of President Buhari, we could see that he was just interested in becoming President not interested in governing the country. And we started criticizing him, telling him privately, saying he was wrong here, he was wrong there, and we became outstanding critics of his government.

So, he did not represent the northern bloc?
No, he didn’t. Buhari didn’t represent the northern block.

He was all by himself or what?
If you are talking about how he became president, that is a different kettle of fish altogether.

But he came from the North. Does that mean those of you who supported Buhari to become President did not speak with one voice?
Not really. We didn’t support Buhari because he was a northerner, but because he was a better option than Goodluck Jonathan. He was a much better option at that time. I supported him because we could clearly see that Jonathan’s administration was weak; he was soft on Boko Haram; he was soft on corruption; he was soft on a lot of things that we believed he could have improved on what he inherited from Yar Adua. So, we saw in Buhair a better option, not because he was a northerner, but he was a better option.

In terms of anticorruption, he has a better reputation for being intolerant of corrupt people, ran the country and jailed corrupt politicians for 300 years; he had dealt with the Chadians who had invaded Nigeria many years ago. Hence, we supported him. It could have been anybody. We were looking for a better option than Jonathan.

But he ended up being the opposite…
Yes, and you see,.. absolutely. I don’t think we have had a government that is worse than Buhari’s government.

You think Buhari’s government was the worst in the history of Nigeria?
We have not had a government that is worse, by the records I have seen. I am 70 years old. I have followed Nigerian politics from way back to the early 70s, I have not seen eight years under a leadership that a government did not set priorities, did not care about them, didn’t care about how the poor lived, or how secure the country was. How the young ones, having no hope, then come back to the point when I joined, I couldn’t find myself sitting on the fence when another government had the mandate to fix Buhari’s damage. Please come along. No responsible person will say no.

But do you regret working with Tinubu, at this moment?
No, I don’t.

Will you do it again if you have the opportunity?
The way the Tinubu government is going, no, but regretting going in, I don’t. I got out because I didn’t see that fire, that commitment, that zeal to fix a country that has been wrecked, instead, I saw a country that became worse.

So, what you saw was a façade not real commitment?
Look at the records. The one I saw was that in 2023, Nigerians lined up, elected President Tinubu, because we thought, okay, Buhari is gone, we are in a mess, and let’s elect a President that will fix Nigeria. The World Bank came in and said ‘put your belt on, we are going through some turbulence, and then removed the subsidy. You would think a President at that stage was quite prepared to take that monumental policy. It turned out he didn’t. He had a handful of advisers, but he couldn’t fix the problem and started looking for a solution, because from the onset, he pushed the country to the fence and we have never really recovered in a way. We keep seeing promises, and there is a difference between what President Tinubu’s people say the country is and what the country is today. It’s miles apart and you wonder whether we are living in the same Nigeria. I think that the issue is should one have committed to working for a government and had at least the mandate of the people to fix things, particularly in the northern part of the country, it is unbelievable the level of insecurity and poverty now.

Is it worse than what Tinubu inherited?
It is worse that Buhari left it.

Does the data support your position?
Isn’t that the statistics that his people are reeling out? And you really wonder where these statistics are coming from. You go to Katsina, Zamfara, Benue, Plateau, in fact, literally, go to every part of Nigeria. More blood is shed now than before, and you see these kinds of statistics that there are less killings; there are less violence, you have to ask, do our leaders really know how our people live? Who is telling them these things? How do these statistics emerge? Because if you want to really measure how people live, you don’t do that just by some statistics. Do the President’s people really tell him the real state of the country? Does he know the number of families that are in hunger or killed?

You were called in to advise this government on the areas the President is known as a master strategist. Would you say that you were allowed to do your job?
No, I didn’t have any joy. I was supposed to be Special Adviser on Political Affairs to the President in the Office of the Vice President. You have to understand that at least in constitutional terms, it is the same thing. Bothe the VP and I were supposed to advise the President and we were two Political Advisers, though I never met the other guy, throughout the one and half year I spent there.

Did you request to meet the President?
I did not, because If I did, I would have told him what he would not love to hear, exactly what I wrote in that letter- Mr. President, please don’t run again.

Why? Some people will say what gave you the authority?
It is not authority; I am making a request.

Why?
First, he has become a President. A lot of people we have now, want to be president just for the fun of it. We have the case of Buhari, including probably Atiku whose multiple attempts to be president was probably driven by desires, because there are better things he could do than to become president of the country.

Like I said in my letter, look for a younger person, more energetic, healthier, more focused, more committed to the future of this country, even from your party. Look for people, younger people, the kind of people who really feel the pain of what Nigeria is today; the kind of people whose children are growing up, and would say ‘what will happen to my children or grandchildren in the next 10 years the way this country is consistently going downhill.

There are lots of educated, very patriotic Nigerians who desperately want to be part of the future of this country. So spend the next two years to fix the economy, the security and hand over power to these ones.

So, you think he does not have the capacity to run for another four years after his first term?
It does not really mean that he does not have the capacity. I don’t know what will happen in the next two years, but I have not seen anything in the last two years that indicates that he will be able to govern for another six years. But even more importantly, he doesn’t need to be president to actually do something good for this country. He should use his power to ensure that come 2027, APC at all levels bring in young people into offices to fix what is broken- that is this country. History will record him as a great leader.