Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), has expressed concerns over what it described as the obsession of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Government in prioritising 2027 campaigns as against addressing serious issues of national importance.
This was as the Forum noted that public policy responses to the insecurity situation, especially in the northern part of the country, had remained ineffective, even as profligacy and reckless expenditures by public officials were in contrast to sacrifices by citizens.
The ACF particularly noted that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has become more interested in getting members of the opposition political parties defect to the APC than tackling issues of insecurity, economy, and other existential challenges confronting the nation.
These were contained in a statement by Professor Muhammad Baba, National Publicity Secretary of the ACF, stressing that most perverse illustration of reckless profligacy of public expenditure has been the revelation about insertions in the 2025 federal budget, for the provision of streetlights at a staggering and unimaginable costs of over N260 million each.
The ACF said; “That there has to date been no official denial of such crassly reckless and surreal insertions attests to the insensitivity of public officials and political representatives to the plight of ordinary Nigerians, whose living conditions continue to deteriorate all round.
“Going by precedent, such budgetary insertions are replicated in various ways at state level. As ACF observed a year ago, the existential challenges above are symptomatic of fundamental malaise in the political economy calling for urgent public policy attention,” it stated.
The ACF said that delusional hubris and head-in-the-sand claims have continue to characterise pronouncement by officials charged with responsibilities for security in contrast to cries of state governors on ground in locations.
It noted that such obsessions and claims only ignore or give blind eyes to possible mass disillusionment, despair, discontent, hopelessness and angst of the populace.
The Forum said that Nigerians continue to endure and could even celebrate occasions such as the Eid was a telling testament to their admirable resilience, which ought not to be taken for granted.
The ACF also said that the Eid-el-Kabir celebration came amid struggles under economic-cum-existential challenges, ranging from dire costs of living expenses, inflation, to rapid deterioration in the value of wages and salaries, among others.
The Forum praised Nigerians over their resilience, asserting that national challenges could be overcome by the entrenchment of the principles of good governance in public officials at local, state and federal levels.
