Former Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, has said the current hardship being experienced in the nation did not start with President Bola Tinubu’s led administration.
Ambode spoke at the Akinjide Adeosun Foundation (AAF)’s 2024 Leadership Colloquium and Award: Chapter 8, with the theme: “ Economic Asphyxiation – The wisdom of Authentic Leaders” held at Alliance Francaise, Ikoyi, on Monday.
The Akinjide Adeosun Foundation (AAF) is a non-profit, nonreligious and non-political organization. It was set up to leave a leadership legacy in Africa by strengthening capabilities in today’s leaders and build a pipeline of ready future leaders by 2035
Ambode said that the Nigeria’s problem had a long history and needed a courageous President like Tinubu to fix them frontally.
“It (challenges)has nothing to do with the singular person called Mr President; but if we don’t understand the fundamental, we will start doing the blame games.
“We need to face our problems frontally.
“The major issue is that we are even tired of not fixing our issues. Now that we have found somebody that has decided in person of President Tinubu,” he said.
The former governor, however, said there was need to make executive reforms on the coordination circle around the President.
Ambode urged Nigerians to stop blame games but be supportive, resilient and patriotic about the country.
He added: “Until we decide ourselves to say that we should unite for the common cause called Nigeria, the security issues will not go.
“We are all in a position to actually support Mr President, let us start to look at it from a different prism.
“We don’t have to wake up in the morning and be talk ill of Nigeria. We get what we profess about Nigeria.”
He said that what Nigeria was facing had been staring on the nation for 300 years, tracing it to slave trade with what he described as “the divide and extract strategy”.
He said that Nigeria needed self-awareness strategy to fix problems in the post COVID-19 era.
“We must think out of the box. We have to feed ourselves.
“When we start to think by ourselves and today we will resolve the issues concerning Nigeria, we will smile,” he added.