Shake up your cabinet, ex-AD scribe tells Tinubu

A former National Secretary of the Alliance for Democracy, Prof. Udenta Udenta, has urged President Bola Tinubu to shake up his cabinet.

In a press statement obtained on Thursday, Udenta addressed the recent nationwide end-hunger protest and the state of the nation, noting that President Tinubu could not continue to govern the country the way he is doing.

He maintained that unless hunger was mitigated, poverty reduced, prices of staple food items crashed significantly, inflationary pressures lowered, naira depreciation reversed, and the prices of petroleum products made within the reach of the people, the nation should expect more hunger protests in the nearest future.

The PUNCH reports that the nationwide protest tagged ‘End Hunger’ and ‘End Bad Governance’ rocked Lagos, Kaduna, Abuja, Kano, Osun, Oyo and other states between August 1 and 10, 2024.

Over a thousand people were reportedly arrested while the police put the death toll at seven, even though civil society organisations maintained that up to a score of people were killed.

Tinubu, who addressed the nation on August 4, said he had heard the cries of the youths and urged them to end the protests.

The protesters, who continued with waning energy till August 10, contended that the President failed to address their demands which included the reversal of fuel subsidy removal, a fall in the price of food, a review of the constitution, and a reduction in the cost of electricity, among others.

For Udenta, the protest is an avoidable response to the hardship in the land.

“President Tinubu should, as a matter of urgency, re-constitute his cabinet and incorporate elements within the organised political opposition and civic groups as President Olusegun Obasanjo did in 1999 and Musa Yar’ardua did in 2007.

“The outcome of such an arrangement will not be a coalition government or a government of national unity in its ‘normal’ institutional appearance; it’s rather a way of re-building political trust and constructing elite consensus and thus enacting one of the pre-conditions for any meaningful impact of economic policies to be felt,” Udenta said.

He noted that: “Anybody who tells President Tinubu that he can continue to govern as he is presently doing doesn’t mean well to him and the long-suffering Nigerian people.

“I observed about three years ago that given the gradual disintegration of the state and the weakening of the historicist logic that undergirds it, it’s in plain sight that no one single party, no one single faction of the elite can govern Nigeria without it falling apart in no distant time.

“What is required now – for the sake of the nation and beyond the narrow permutations and interests of partisan warlords – is a rethink of the foundational logic that President Tinubu underpinned his presidency. As was drawn to me by a deeply knowledgeable player in the nation’s ideas circuit, President Tinubu’s national broadcast did not contain one line of presidential proclamations, presidential convening orders and presidential directives! Not one line!”

He added that President Tinubu should quickly convene a conclave of the nation’s leading political players to include his counterparts in the 2023 presidential election – Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party; the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress and those of the above-mentioned parties.

According to Udenta, at the end of the conclave, Tinubu should re-establish the Office of Special Adviser to the President on Inter-Party Relations.

He stated, “My personal suggestion on the stalwarts to invite to such a gathering are individuals I have neither discussed this matter with and do not really know how they will individually react to it: Femi Falana SAN, Dr Olisa Agbakoba SAN, Annkio Briggs, Clem Nwankwo, Sen Shehu Sani, Dr Kole Shettima, Owei Lakemfa, Prof Sam Amadi, Prof Jibrin Ibrahim, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, Prof Chidi Odinkalu, and Ene Obi.

Others are: “Omoyele Sowore, Amb Nkoyo Toyo, Deji Adeyanju, Dele Farotimi and Aisha Yesufu.”

According to him, these are patriots with impeccable credentials and a proud history of telling unvarnished truth to power.