(Magnus Eze, ABUJA)
Former Imo State Governor, Chief Ikedi Ohakim has urged Nigerians to bear with President Muhammadu Buhari in their expectation of him to fulfil his campaign promises.
The ex-state chief executive who was guest on Focus Nigeria, an African Independent Television (AIT) breakfast programme, monitored in Abuja yesterday, where he spoke on the President’s Democracy Day speech reasoned that Buhari is a late starter as witnessed in the slowness of his administration.
Ohakim said that Buhari’s snail-speed style first manifested in the constitution of the cabinet which came six months after assuming power May 29, last year, noting that the nation is facing economic war that requires definitive actions.
He said: “Even in family, you have late starters and early starters. Some people can begin a race so well and collapse midway; some people can start slowly and hit the ground running at the middle of the race. All I am thinking is that Mr President may be a late starter. From his inaugural speech, I had expected that he will hit the ground running, but he didn’t do that. It took him six months to constitute executive council; he was trying to be careful.
“Today things are very dynamic; society does not wait for anybody. The economy does not wait for anybody. Agreed he has lost the time, but there is still time for him to regain momentum and finish the race. There are certain things he was supposed to have done initially which he didn’t do, like the appointment of his ministers; like the turbulence that we are experiencing in the oil and gas industry, one would have expected that Mr President would constitute the board of NNPC immediately before taking certain actions; that did not happen.”
He also said that the President should have appointed ambassadors for the country’s missions abroad before embarking on his frequent foreign trips, saying that the envoys like branch managers of a company would have concretised the likely gains of the trips.