A member of the opposition coalition floated on the platform of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Salihu Lukman, has blamed President Bola Tinubu for “rewarding” governors who mismanage and divert public resources for personal use.
Lukman said, despite evidence that some governors don’t use hefty federal allocations for the development of their states, the president keeps approving large sums to sub-national governments.
The former National Vice Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Friday.
In various forms and shades, Nigerians have protested all-time high inflation, hunger and skyrocketing living cost in the last two years since ex-Lagos governor Tinubu took the reins of government.
Analysts have attributed the biting economic hardship to the government’s twin policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of the foreign exchange windows.
On Tuesday, the United States Embassy in Nigeria shared a report on how governors splurge billions on renovating government houses despite the economic hardship in the country, occasioned by the removal of petrol subsidy.
“Such alleged lack of fiscal responsibility fuels inequality and erodes public trust,” the embassy stated.
On Thursday, Tinubu urged the governors of the 36 states to invest more in poverty eradication and make Nigerians feel the impact of good governance.
Lukman said, “Yes, the president has said the right thing, but what is he doing to ensure that governors do what they need to do?
“The president can do something, but what I see him doing is to reward them for doing the wrong things.”
Lukman said the 23 APC governors in the country, and their opposition counterparts in 13 states, have become arrogant and unaccountable to the people because they control party structures.
“Once we have a system where the structure of the party is subordinated to them, they will continue with this arrogance, and continue to be unaccountable and convert public resources as if it is their personal property,” he said.
Lukman added that the Tinubu administration has been more focused on admitting opposition governors to the APC without any structure of accountability to the people who elected them. So far in 2025, Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori and his Akwa Ibom State counterpart, Umo Eno, joined the APC from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
“For instance, when your recruitment policy in your party is blindly informed in a way that all you want is for people to come into your party without giving them the conditions that need to happen for them to be accountable to their people.
“As far as I can see, the objectives of many of them are to be where they are and not to deliver services,” he said.
‘APC Damaged, Worse Than PDP’
The ADC chieftain said the leadership of his former party, the APC, betrayed the trust invested in it by party members.
“In APC, we invested every trust in the leaders and at the end of the day, leaders betrayed that trust, and that is why APC is damaged today, whereby it is worse than the PDP,” he said.
He said the ADC has learnt from the mistakes of the APC and would do things better if the party produces the next president in 2027.
“The ADC as a coalition, I see it as a platform for struggle. We have to engage our leaders. The mistake many of us make is to imagine that leaders are rational and, left on their own, they will do the right thing.
“Our objectives of forming the coalition is to organise it in such a way that if we produce the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and governance, all those people will be accountable to the party and the party will properly direct them to deliver services based on the electoral promises as provided in the manifesto of the party,” he said.
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