Buhari will be better rated after leaving office, says Gambari

Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, said Nigerians would value more the contributions of the President to the socio-economic development of the nation at the end of his tenure of office.

Gambari, while delivering the 12th Convocation lecture of Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin, Kwara State, said Buhari’s government excelled in its three-fold agenda for Nigerians, just as he blamed any observable lapses on global recession.

He told the audience at the capacity-filled multi-purpose hall of the institution that, “under Buhari, significant strides have been made in the implementation of the administration’s tripod programmes on security, economy and anti-corruption,” adding: “The score card is there for any objective analysis. In addition to massive infrastructural projects, at the end of his second and final tenure on May 29, 2023, the President would leave Nigeria a legacy of safer, more diversified and growing economy and more united country than he inherited in 2015.”

Gambari, an ex-diplomat, said democracy remain the best form of government globally but blamed the seeming low churning out of the dividends in some countries on paucity of public revenues to service various competing needs that governments must serve and the economic meltdown that hit the United States economy before spreading to Europe and the rest of the world.

He noted: “As unemployment, poverty and inequality have persisted, a fertile ground has fostered itself as to enable the emergence of an array of enemies of Nigerian democratisation.

“These anti-democratic forces include the admixture of radical extremist groups, trans frontier and home-grown criminal gangs, different groups of pirates and bearers of violent ethno-regional irredentism, etc.”

Among the audience were the Visitor to the university, Dr. Raheem Oladimeji, the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Noah Yusuf and the Mutawalle of Ilorin who is also the immediate elder brother of Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahaman AbdulRazak

Gambari canvassed a stronger capacity of Nigerian public service institutions, eradication of corruption in the public sector and introduction of moral rectitude as some urgent interventions needed to blossom the nation’s democracy.