Former Governor of Niger State, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, says President Bola Tinubu’s administration is performing well but lacks an effective communication strategy to relay its achievements to Nigerians.
Aliyu, who also chairs the Board of Trustees of the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation (SABMF), made the comment on The Morning Show, a current affairs programme on Arise Television, while reacting to the outcome of a recent public accountability session held in Kaduna.
The forum, which brought together federal ministers and top government officials, was organised by the SABMF to provide a platform for President Tinubu’s appointees to present the administration’s performance to northern stakeholders.
The event followed claims from some northern political leaders that the region was being marginalised under Tinubu’s leadership.
Aliyu, reflecting on the discussions at the Kaduna forum, said the government is facing public dissatisfaction not because it hasn’t delivered, but because it is failing to tell its own story effectively.
“What I understood from all the discussions that we’ve had is that the government officials are either shy or are not communicating well. You do not depend only on the Ministry of Information to be able to communicate with the citizens,” he said.
“Every minister, every head of parastatal should be able to tell the people what he’s been doing and we saw so many evidence that many parastatals have been doing very well but people are not aware.
“And with the cumulating problems, particularly insecurity, kidnapping and poverty, that I think also dented the government approach to matters. In other words, the government needs to be more of advocate, the government needs to be very straight forward and communicate properly with the people, not paying too much attention to political trends.
The ex-governor said it is proper for political leaders in the North to make demands from Tinubu’s administration since the bulk of the votes that took to power came from the region.
“Let the people understand what is happening on the ground. If by what we say that 63/64 percent of the vote came from the north, it is only logical that the north will be expecting so much from the government. But from what we have seen so far is that the government is doing well but they do not know how to communicate very well.”
