Tinubu’s Lagos Technocrats In Government Cause Of Current Discontent In Nigeria –  Fmr SGF Lawal Asks Tinubu To Remove Them

By Ayodele Oni

A former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal has accused President Bola Tinubu of filling his cabinet with technocrats from Lagos who lack knowledge of how Nigeria works.

He equally advised the President to immediately address the nation, outlining immediate and long-term measures out of the current economic quagmire, as one of the measures to nip the planned nationwide protests against his administration.

Lawal, in a statement on Tuesday, stated that the president should reshuffle the cabinet to include “a mix of technocrats and politicians.”

Calling for a mix of technocrats and politicians in the Cabinet, Lawal pointed out that politicians are more adept at communicating with the people and have more stake in the successes or failures of a government.

“These Lagos technocrats who now fill the MDAs lack knowledge of the workings of Nigeria. Majority of them are rude, inaccessible, clannish.”

The former SGF also told the President to purposefully address the excessive nepotism in this Government, noting that “the South West dominates this Government excessively and obnoxiously.’

He added that the current Senate leadership operates a dictatorship in which no dissent is tolerated.

“This is insidiously building an imperceptible revolt that might soon explode. For example, Senator Ndume was sincerely speaking truth to power when he said the president is unreachable.

“A slavish legislature is neither good for your long-term interests or that of the country at large.

“People are taking exceptions to these ways of handling contrary opinions in the polity.

“In the North, we have taken great exception to how you or people acting on your behalf maltreated, Nasiru, Ningi, Ndume and lately Dangote.

“Your very close associates are also busy meddling in the affairs of Senior traditional institutions in the North West, which we believe has the intended purpose of dismembering Northern political and social harmony and hegemony.

“In the South East, your fixation on Peter Obi and the unfair treatment of Igbo businesses in Lagos is unsettling.

“There is also no denying the fact that political crises in Rivers State would have been long settled had the President shown an inclination to resolve them.

“It is instructive that no individual or institution in the South West has suffered such unjust treatment.

“These kinds of situations are some of the triggers of the current discontents across the nation because they generate dispersed pockets of frustration and malcontents that eventually aggregate into a large whole resulting in bad blood against the person of the president and the government.”

He also declared that the military has blatantly ignored the fact that internal security is wholly the constitutional responsibility of the Nigerian Police Force, wondering why they have been warning against the planned protests.