Work ahead enormous - Group tells president-elect

A democracy group, Think-Tank for Democracy, has advised the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, to embark on policies that would tackle the country’s age-long problems.

The group of pro-democracy activists made the call on Wednesday at a press conference in Ikeja, Lagos.

A statement signed by the group’s chairman, Prof. Lucky Akaruese, and the secretary, Prof. Sylvester Akhaine, read in part, “Our country is plagued by many problems. These include poverty, unemployment, insecurity, separatist agitation; debt overhang; corruption, poor infrastructure, and, above all, skewed power distribution approximated by the 1999 Constitution. Indeed, the polity is badly divided, and it needs healing.

“Tinubu needs to address these problems. It needs the support of every Nigerian to do so; it requires honesty of purpose. Above all, it requires assembling the best and brightest in the land to do so beyond an assemblage of party partisans.”

Also speaking on the recently concluded 2023 general elections, the group stated, “We know that our country is one of many nationalities/peoples that are territorially segregated and linguistically diverse. The over-dramatisation of identity politics of the ethnic hue will only lead us to the road to Kigali. There are distinct class questions such as poverty which has no ethnic boundary that should bother us. We must as much as possible drift away from ethnic politics because of its toxicity and inclination to violence.

“Despite the above discontent of the process, somehow, actors at play have won some forms of victory. To be sure, there are noticeable positive developments in the process that we should run with and further transform. One of them is the magic of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System to the effect that it negates every act of over-voting and moderates the inclination towards over-voting and outright manufacture of election results.”