Nigeria’s spiralling security crisis is the direct result of “bad, indifferent leaders” over the past 15 years, a former adviser to President Bola Tinubu charged Friday, urging swift domestic reforms over foreign meddling.
Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, ex-special adviser and ex-spokesman for the Northern Elders Forum, laid the blame squarely at the feet of successive administrations during an Arise TV appearance, describing the nation’s leadership as a “consistent failure” that has allowed threats to mutate and proliferate unchecked.
“The only thing that has been consistent all along is that we have had bad leaders going as far back as perhaps after President Yar’Adua,” Baba-Ahmed said. “All the way, all through the last 10, the last 15 years, this country has been poorly led. Everything that happens to this country, you can visit it on the doorstep of our leadership.”
He singled out Tinubu’s government and its predecessor under Muhammadu Buhari for inaction, stating: “We are where we are today because our leaders have failed us. President Tinubu has failed us. The president before him for eight years had done virtually nothing about the increasing place of insecurity in our lives.”
Baba-Ahmed painted a grim picture of the evolving threats, contrasting the 2009 Boko Haram insurgency with today’s landscape. “If you go back to 2009, when the first uprising of Boko Haram occurred, to where we are today, the mutation of some of these problems, and also the addition of new challenges, has changed the face of this conflict entirely,” he noted. “We’re not really talking about the same Nigeria. Nigeria today is dramatically different from Nigeria of even 10 years ago.”
The commentary comes amid heightened international scrutiny, including US President Donald Trump’s recent vows to protect Nigeria’s Christian minority from what he called an “existential threat” posed by “radical Islamists.” Trump claimed “thousands and thousands” of Christians were being killed, adding: “We stand ready, willing, and able to save our great Christian population around the world. This is not going to happen.”
Baba-Ahmed dismissed such rhetoric as uninformed and counterproductive, warning that US intervention would only undermine Nigeria’s sovereignty. “America would not fix Nigeria. That is the last thing we need — an America breathing down our neck and making Nigeria weak because we can buckle under,” he said. “Nigeria holds a huge strategic position in the geopolitics, in the Sahel, in West Africa, in Africa. It’s not the kind of country where you have a president who is used to getting his way.”
Nigeria’s federal government swiftly rebuffed Trump’s allegations as “false and misleading,” reaffirming its commitment to tackling insecurity through homegrown strategies, including bolstering interfaith dialogue and community reconciliation in affected regions.
