Veteran journalist and Ovation Magazine publisher Dele Momodu has described the current suffering facing Nigeria as unprecedented, citing unprecedented economic hardship and insecurity under President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
Speaking in an interview with Rufai Oseni on Nevon Media, Momodu said President Bola Tinubu’s led government has failed to show remorse or take responsibility for the suffering of citizens.
He said the hardship in the country had gotten to a point where he now dreads checking messages on his phone because of the volume of people reaching out to him for financial help.
“These days, even for me to open some messages on my phone, I’m scared, because everyone is begging. ” The suffering of the people is unprecedented,” he said.
Momodu, who said he was 66, approaching 67, noted that his age gave him the benefit of having witnessed Nigeria’s past challenges but insisted that nothing in the country’s history compared to the present situation.
“I’m old enough to know and understand the challenges we’ve encountered in Nigeria before now. Nothing can equal the current situation,” he said.
He faulted the federal government’s handling of insecurity, describing it as the worst he had seen, and criticised the administration for failing to show any remorse for the state of the nation.
“Insecurity has never been so bad. And I’m not seeing any sense of remorse or atonement. Everything is, ‘We are doing something about it; we do something about it,’” he said.
Momodu also faulted the president over what he described as poor communication with Nigerians, insisting that regular engagement with citizens was essential to governance.
He said that if he were president, he would prioritise keeping the citizenry informed daily, drawing a comparison with United States President Donald Trump, whom he said addresses Americans regularly despite his age.
“If I were the president of Nigeria, number one, information is power. You must inform the citizenry every day. If you look at even Donald Trump at his age, sometimes you see him standing there at press conferences; he’s almost falling asleep, but he’s speaking to Americans,” he said.
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