Buhari Had Better Grip Of Things In First Term Than Second Term – Osinbajo’s Ex-Aide

A former vice-presidential aide, Laolu Akande, has critically assessed ex-President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term, stating that the former President had a better grip on governance during his first term than in his second tenure from May 2019 to May 2023.

Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily program, Akande expressed his views on Buhari’s administrative changes, particularly highlighting the shift of the National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP) from the presidency to the newly created Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development.

According to him, this move did not yield the expected outcomes.

These comments were made in the context of discussing the newly launched book, ‘Working with Buhari: Reflections of A Special Adviser, Media, and Publicity (2015-2023)’, written by Femi Adesina, another former presidential spokesman.

The book launch in Abuja on Tuesday sparked conversations about Buhari’s administration, with Akande’s critique adding to the discourse.

According to Akande, “We can take the witness account of Mr Femi Adesina to the bank. That was what he witnessed for eight years. There may be other perspectives that may not be in the story,” he said, adding that “President Buhari is actually a very amiable person, you can’t be in his presence and not laugh.”

However, Akande, now the public affairs analyst and host of Inside Sources With Laolu Akande, a talk show on Channels Television every Friday, did not agree with some of the decisions Buhari made while in office.

Akande said, “What I have found in the last eight years is that the personality of the principal, of the person who is number one, has to be a certain kind of personality but more than that, is the will and the capacity to deliver.

“I think President Buhari between 2015 and 2019 had a better grip of things than between 2019 and 2023. I think he made some strategic decisions that I don’t agree with such as the decision, for instance, to create this humongous ministry – Humanitarian Affairs – where he put social investment.”

According to him, Buhari took the programme from the folks who had done an excellent job between 2016 and 2019 and had won accolades locally and internationally. “You took it from them,” he said, adding that “It was a very tense situation”.

“If you are going to do that, you don’t have that kind of sharp disconnection because it was a sharp disconnection between the people who were handling it from 2016 and 2019.

“I think the President was trying to say that let’s institutionalise this in a ministry but there was no handshake between those who were handling it and the new ministry.”

The National Social Investment Office (NSIO) was created in 2016 and was put under the supervision of the former VP, Osinbajo.

The programmes under the NSIP involved four broad programmes (N-Power, Conditional Cash Transfers, National Home-Grown School Feeding and Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programmes).

They were uniquely targeted towards different subgroups of Nigerians for empowerment and impacted over 12 million direct beneficiaries and over 30 million indirect beneficiaries.

However, in mid-2019, ex-President Buhari moved the programmes to a new ministry – humanitarian affairs, which has been lately embroiled in all kinds of fraud.

Ex-minister Sadiya Umar-Farouq and her successor, Betta Edu, are being probed by anti-graft agencies for various alleged financial malfeasance during their separate stewardship of the Humanitarian Affairs Ministry.

Umar-Farouq is being investigated for alleged N37.1 billion money laundering, while Edu is in a N585m disbursement mess.

Also, the sacked National Coordinator of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIPA), Halima Shehu, is also being probed for alleged embezzlement of N44.8bn, with N39.8 billion out of N44.8billion recovered from her.