Senate Chief Whip Ali Ndume has claimed that Nigeria’s President, Bola Tinubu, is being influenced by individuals within the Presidential Villa who feed him false information and protect him from well-meaning Nigerians who could provide him with the truth.
His allegation follows a Senate resolution on Wednesday advising the government to address the hunger in the land or face a potential uprising.
Ndume, who co-sponsored a motion presented by Senator Sunday Karimi, Chairman of the Committee on Senate Services, entitled “Urgent Need to Address Food Insecurity and Market Exploitation of Consumables in Nigeria.” expressed concern that insufficient action has been taken recently to alleviate the security challenge in the country, which continues to pose a constant threat to food security.
“Mr President is not in the picture of what is happening outside the villa. He has been fenced off and caged. So many of us won’t go through the backdoor to engage him.
“Now, they have stopped him from talking, and he doesn’t have public affairs managers, except his spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale, who writes press statements.
“Nigerians are getting very, very angry. The government is not doing anything about the food scarcity and needs to do something urgently. We don’t have a food reserve.
“There is unavailability of food. A food crisis is the worst crisis that any nation can encounter. If we add that to the security crisis, it will be severe.”
He urged President Tinubu to “wake up” and “open his doors to those who will tell him the truth”.