TheCable

Akin Osuntokun, director-general of the Labour Party (LP) presidential campaign council in the 2023 general election, says the “last-minute approach” by President Bola Tinubu towards resolving the crisis of fuel subsidy removal is not working.

Osuntokun, who spoke in an exclusive chat with TheCable, on Saturday, said the president has over three months, between the time he was declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the time he was sworn-in to plan how he was going to run the government.

He said the only way out of the challenges the country is currently facing is restructuring.

“The current situation is the manifestation of the dysfunction of Nigeria all along. The constitution of the country has been bastardised and has become dysfunctional,” Osuntokun said.

“In other words, even with the best of efforts, we are not likely to get far with whatever we want to do. That is why the only option we have now is what is called restructuring or restoration of federalism.

“The problem that I see is that, unfortunately, the government of President Tinubu seem not to have anticipated or prepared for the kind of challenges or crisis that we are experiencing.

“That, to me, is a sad commentary because if you are going to run for the office of president of Nigeria and you have this period, between when you are declared by INEC and the day you are sworn-in, that is about three months. What did President Tinubu do with those three months? That was enough time to simulate all the crises we are having now and how best to respond to them.

“What is happening now is inevitable. There is no way you are going to remove oil subsidy and floatation of the naira that you won’t have the crisis that we have now. The kind of policies that we have in place now can only work in the long run, not in the short term. They ought to have anticipated all these challenges but they did not. Now, we are seeing all manners of fire brigade approaches which doesn’t work.”

While calling for a total overhaul of Nigeria’s constitution, Osuntokun said it is clear that Tinubu and his cabinet members are not well prepared for the numerous challenges facing Nigeria today.

“There are two major explanations for what is happening now. First is that the president and his government are not well prepared for the crisis we are confronting today. All these palliatives and monies they are just throwing around, that should have happened from the very beginning,” Osuntokun said.

“The second has to do with the insecurity crisis in the country. Almost everybody now is being converted to the idea of state police. However, state police is just an item in the constitution. There are a lot of factors in it. In fact, the constitution itself, if we don’t overhaul it, we are not going to go far as a nation.”