Presidential aide Femi Adesina believes President Muhammadu Buhari has done enough to leave Nigeria a safer place.
Nigeria has been dealing with a slew of security issues across the country, with banditry and kidnapping for ransom among the most common.
However, Adesina claims that, in comparison to when his principal took power in 2015, the situation is much better.
“No doubt about it. He would leave a safer country. When he came in 2015, you could not be sure Nigeria would exist in the next one month. As of 2015, what was happening was that nobody could confidently say that Nigeria would be on the map in the following next week, month or year. But we saw that he came and took the battle to the insurgency,” he said while fielding questions on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.
“When he came, the insurgency was the main thing and he took the battle to them. Then, it became hydra-headed – banditry, kidnapping for ransom, cultism, and separatist agitations joined. How many challenges can one administration really confront? That’s the issue with the Buhari administration. From day one till now, it was from one challenge to the other.”
In spite of these, and the administration set to end next year, he maintained that the government had done much to curtail the challenges and would end on a high note.
“But we also see some calm in the country now. You can’t compare what we have today with what we had six months ago or one year ago. Six months is enough time to finish off what is on the ground.”
Adesina admitted, however, that one administration cannot fully tackle the country’s security challenges and wants the next government to continue from where President Buhari would stop.
“Security would always be a continuum,” he said, noting that even the world’s superpowers are battling one issue or the other.
“You would never get to a time you would sit back and say ‘We are all sound, safe and secure, no need to be alert again’. No, you would never get to that point,” Adesina added.