The Senate minority leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe, has described the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari as very provincial and narrow-minded. The senator representing Abia South said the president’s lack of experience in managing diversity in a multi-ethnic society was responsible for the marginalisation of the Southeast in his appointments and not hatred as being bandied.

Abaribe spoke in Lagos last Thursday at a special colloquium in honour of the late country manager of Thomas Cook (Travelex) and chairman, Board of Trustees of Ngwa Social Club, Chief Godson U. Evulukwu.

The theme of the colloquium was, ‘Human Development Concerns of an Altruistic Colossus.’Abaribe, who is an in-law to the deceased said: “When somebody is so insular and doesn’t have a friend anywhere or know anybody outside his clan, he tends to be only comfortable with those who come from around him.”

Insisting on his earlier claim that there was no senior Igbo appointment in the Presidential villa, he added: “The government decided that they were going to give a waiver to Dangote Industries to export cement from the roads, despite the fact that the borders were closed. When we did our investigation, we found out that Dangote was not the first company given the waiver. BUA, owned by the Indimi’s was the first to be given that waiver. The Indimi’s are in-laws to the president. So, it was a nepotistic action.

“We now asked why is Ibeto not called because he manufactures cement too? We found out that Ibeto was not aware of what was happening because he doesn’t have anybody in the villa. It is when you have someone that they will tell you, this is what is happening; bring your own letter for waiver.

“Just from this incident, you will know that we are not there. That is why this government is floundering and drowning itself and trying to drown Nigeria. The government is not opening its arms wide to bring in everybody to contribute their quota, to make sure that we resolve our problems.”

On what he thinks about the call for the sack of Service Chiefs, he said the buck stops at the president’s table since he was the one elected by Nigerians. He stressed that no one would remember the Service Chiefs when the failure of the government would be recalled in future.

According to him, people were trying to make the president inviolable by blaming the Service Chiefs for the failure of the government to tackle insecurity.

While making reference to the controversy surrounding the summon of the president by the House of Representatives, he explained that under normal circumstances, the president would have been the one excited about talking to his citizens without ceaseless prodding.

The lawmaker added that presidents all over the world during the COVID-19 induced lockdown interacted directly with their citizens continuously while Nigeria’s experience was different. (The Guardian)

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