Insecurity; Ex kogi Acting Gov. charges Buhari to sack his service chiefs due to their poor performance
Piqued by the spate of insecurity rocking the very foundation of the country, a former Acting Governor of Kogi State Chief Clarence Olafemi has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to sack his service chiefs due to their poor performance in the last five years.
Olafemi, in an exclusive interview with Journalists in Lokoja on Thursday, described the current service chiefs as expired product, stressing that, the service chiefs should safe their face by resigning their appointment.
Excerpt.
In a civilized society, the service chiefs has no moral justifications to remain in office when they have spent years more than the stipulated duratiion.
There must be a parameter in measuring performance, it has become embarrassing that Boko Haram in the North East is running a parallel government in a country under Nigeria.
The former speaker of the Kogi State House of Assembly, said Nigeria has a problem of structural management, as those who occupied juicy positions don’t want to leave even though they cannot perform.
The government priority should be in security. That security is becoming another thing. It is to prevent so many thing. For Example, people like me who supposed to be seventy years wants to retire. We want to go into agriculture. Am afraid that I might be in my farm and kidnappers will come and pick me up there
“Even to travel and manage my business, any time am traveling from Lokoja to Mopamuro, my home town, until I reach there, I will be looking backward, side ways, thinking that kidnappers, armed robbers are all around. We still have not been aggressive the way we should.
” In the North East, were Boko Haram is the order of the day, even if we are fighting a civil war, how long did the civil war in Nigeria lasted. And this was all out war.
” It is becoming embarrassing to us today that Nigeria has a boundary. A define boundary, and we see a state were Boko Haram is running a government in over one third of the Local Government area that made up the State. It is as good as saying that they have formed a country of their own.
“Why, is it taking so long. To we the ordinary citizens and the enlightened citizens, we are not convinced that the government have been able to make success out of their struggles . And it has a split over effect in the sense that, one still don’t know how they get their source of ammunitions.
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‘ If they say we have bilateral arrangements with some surrounding countries, did they drop it through the air. And what is the work of our intelligent gathering machineries. Even though they are doing there best, their best is not good enough for this country. We have to come out and say the truth.
” I still stand by the fact that the President can not be everywhere, neither can he do everything for the country. But the people charged with that responsibility has failed. They must accept the face that they have failed.
“For the Service Chief, am not only just calling for their sack, they should simply resign by them selves. In a civilized country, what exactly are they doing there. What is the moral justification for remaining in that positions.
”Ordinary football, if you are playing, and you see a particular player, no matter how good they may say he is, for that particular game, not meeting up in. form in communication with others, they will pull him out and put another person.
“We call it cut and paste in computer. Are we saying that, except those service chiefs Nigeria can not survive militarily. When it is obvious that things were going astray. When there was #EndSARS protest, my fear was that, if the EndSARS had won the war the way they wanted, there will be nothing like Nigeria again because the country is so fragmented.
“We will just find our self waking up into anarchy. And anarchy has no leadership. The Boko Haram in the North East, Fulani herdsmen in the North West, the problem of fighting in the North Central, Benue, Plateau, South West, We have the Amotekuns, South East, IPOBs, and we have the Niger Delta militants.
Tell me, who will coordinate all this people to make us remain as a country when we have a government that was over turned by Civil Disobedience.
“So, we did not know what God really did for us by saving us from #EndSARS in 2020. And we are still not out of the wood. All the people in government should wake up in 2021 and address the problem of Nigeria Squarely.
“A lot of them has no idea. Even when you have the idea, debate it, they won’t implement it. We have a problem in this country.
We have problem of structural management. People who occupied positions, they don’t want to leave and they know they cannot perform. And because of the way the nations political structure, they have some themselves to a regional lords. So it is difficult to remove them.
“So the country has no option than to keep recycling them even when they are no longer useful to the country. May be because of the state they came from, if every state must have the minister, they are the lord from there so must be repeatedly made the minister. You will find out now that it is even difficult for the president to reshuffle his cabinet, which he should have done for a very long time.
” There is a problem. There must be parameter to measure performance. If you know that somebody performance is below expectation, you pull him off. For example if you are a minister of finance and within four years you have not been able to come out with a way to sanitize the budget of this country, to reduce corruption in a low percentage, then you are not fit to be in that position’ he stated.