Mallam Nasir El-rufai, former Kaduna State governor has said that bandits have taken over leadership in Nigeria and this has put the country in trouble.
He stated this on Saturday while speaking in Abuja during a lecture commemorating the 60th birthday of former Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi, themed “Weaponization of Poverty in Nigeria”.
El-rufai argued that the country keeps repeating previous mistakes of electing the worst people into leadership positions.
“Nigeria is in its biggest trouble since 1914 and that is why we are together working and conspiring to build a coalition to take Nigeria back on track because it is off track,” he said.
He criticized the quality of leadership, blaming the country’s challenges on the emergence of incompetent individuals in positions of power.
“It has turned to this level because we have allowed bandits, not the ones in the bushes but the ones in the urban areas called the urban bandits to take over leadership,” he said.
“I believe that the problem that we have, which I think (former) Governor Babangida referred to, is that we just get incompetent people and we hand over leadership to them. Most of them don’t really know what to do. They just know how to grab power but don’t know what to do with it.”
He called on Nigerians to become more active in shaping the country’s future by electing leaders who possess the necessary “competence, capability, capacity and commitment” to drive meaningful progress.