The streets are not smiling – Ex-APC chieftain Jackson Ojo tells Tinubu

By Mike Odiakose, Abuja

As officials of the government and leaders of All Progressives Congress (APC) labour to market the achievements of the present administration, a former chieftain of the ruling party, Dr Jackson Lekan Ojo has told President Bola Tinubu that there are no smiles on the streets of Nigeria.

In a message posted on his social media pages, Dr Ojo said government officials and economists had been receiving Tinubu with statistics that were at variance with the reality on the ground about the economic situation in the country.

Dr. Ojo declared that the Tinubu administration had failed woefully in managing the economy, but he still had about two years to reverse the negative trend.

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According to him, “the middle class has been wiped out of the country and only the rich and poor classes are now in Nigeria.

“In the area of security, economy, and others, I know President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his administration failed 90 per cent, woeful failure, F9 parallel. But there are still time, in the next two years they may improve.

“But nothing is working for now is that you see some economists coming to tell lies that GDP growth is high and that the economy is working. The economy is
working in the pocket of the political class. There is no middle class today. Before we had the rich, we had the middle class and the poor. Today, we have only the rich and the poor. This rich class are not up to 30 per cent of the Nigerian – that is to say 70 per cent of Nigerians are poor, they are suffering today.”

On the issue of security, Jackson Ojo who is a security expert of global repute, said one of his teachers told him that “the biggest fertilizer or manure for criminality is poverty because he that is down fears no fall.

“Let me round it up with a story. I went to a medical facility, and a woman brought her daughter to the place and told them to take N300 and me some drugs. They told her that with the condition of baby like this, you need nothing less than N3,000. The woman said if that it the case, she let the baby go home and die.

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“I said Madam why are you saying this? ” She said even if I drop this N300, there won’t be any food for the child to even eat. That is the level we are in this country today. There are some persons that can’t even afford N100.

“A lot of these people are telling lies to Mr. President about this and that.

“No, Mr. President, the streets are not smiling.”

On the controversial report and allegations of genocide against Christians in Nigeria, Dr Ojo, the report is not a true representation of bandits attacks in the country.

“When Ted Cruz sent some delegations to Nigeria to go and kind of evedrop and get some information to present it on the floor of the Senate of the United States of America, definitely it is either an internal information was sent from here to him or he sent a delegation to do that. Whichever way, it was a very wrong information that was circulated across the world about Nigeria.

“Ninety per cent of the victims in Yobe, Adamawa, and Borno states are Muslims.

“When you go to Kaduna state, Katsina State, Niger State, Kebbi State, Zamfara, including Kogi State, 98 per cent of the victims are Muslims.

“Recently, during early morning prayers in two mosques in Katsina State, they bracketed them (worshippers), they killed them, and they set the mosques ablaze Is it a church?

“Some persons predicted some years ago that Nigeria will break up, but Nigeria is not breaking up, and these people are not happy.

“There are some people too within the country here instead of criticizing the government constructively, the criticism unhealthily that is going to bounce on the citizens of Nigeria and is causing serious reputation damage.

“Ted Cruz got wrong direct or indirect information about Nigeria – nothing of such is happening in Nigeria today.

“But then, do you blame anybody. The people that are supposed to represent and launder the image of this country overseas they are either the Ambassadors or the defence attache. Today, I doubt if Nigeria has any ambassador in any part of the world.

“We don’t have anybody to launder or protect our image abroad, so what are we talking about?

“Sometimes ago a Canada high court opened their mouth to say APC and PDP in Nigeria are terrorist groups. What that means is that all those people who belong to PDP and APC are terrorists.

“Since that time, has the Nigerian government done anything? No.

“Assuming we have Ambassador in Canada, he would have refuted it immediately and asked the court to reverse that pronouncement.

“So it is not their fault. There are things we are hot handling well here at home, and that is what is affecting our international image.”

“The present administration inherited this from the past administration, but the say government is a continum.
I think if the past administration failed to do certain things, it should be the focus of this administration to do them.”