Sule Lamido, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, has criticised the plan of several Northern States Governors to travel to the United States of America for a lecture on promoting stability in Northern Nigeria.
Lamido, a former governor of Jigawa State, expressed his opinion on his Facebook page, calling the legendary trip a waste of essential resources and an embarrassment beyond the country’s borders.
Lamido blamed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the NIA for failing to properly guide the governors against the trip, insisting that the trip exposed their ignorance of working the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
He noted that “If the governors had travelled to the US to engage on how to boost agriculture, health issues, or any other pressing local problems listed on the Concurrent List of our Constitution, this could be quite understandable!
“But to engage on issues that are on the Exclusive Legislative List, such as security, says a lot about the substance they are made of.
“Security is a very wide subject, which their Excellencies must have the capacity to grasp.
“If the governors were serious and wanted to have a lecture on security, they need not have embarked on such a wasteful journey with the accompanying expenditure of flight tickets, hotels with all their aides, and above all, the valuable time wasted at the expense of running their states.
“Certainly, they could have gotten more than they wanted from our resourceful institutions, such as NIPSS in Kuru Jos, ASCON in Badagry, or even NIA!
“These three institutions have more materials, essays, and templates on the problems of security in Nigeria than the far-fetched American Institute.
He regretted that “Most urban towns in their states lack potable drinking water, and refuse dumps have taken over some streets; all these have precipitous security and health hazards.
“Our children attend primary schools under trees, and where there are built classes, they take their lessons sitting on the floor, yet the security implications of this cannot be discerned by their Excellencies.
“Deliberate and harshly induced poverty by unplanned government policies has made citizens lose their esteem, honour, and self-worth by lining up and scrambling to collect palliatives from patronising and condescending leaders, yet the insecurity of this is of no worry or concern to them.
“You have governors with no human empathy or respect for dignity or decency in an open show of shame, throwing money like confetti from an open Jeep, and people scrambling to pick it up like the Governor of Niger State” he stated
It could recalled that the three day conference was designed to address insecurity in Northern Nigeria and better option to mitigate the challenge.
A statement by the Director General of the Media and Publicity, Kano Government House, Sanusi Bature Dawakin Tofa, a few days back stated that the engagement will enable the Governors of some of the troubled states come to deep understanding of the dynamics of security threats, its socio-economic dimensions, and near-term opportunities to drive stability in the region.