Former Kogi West Senator, Dino Melaye, on Friday criticised President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Democracy Day broadcast, describing it as detached from the realities facing Nigerians.
The former lawmaker also called on the President to resign over worsening insecurity and the rise in cases of abductions across the country.
Melaye made the remarks in Abuja during the third posthumous legacy colloquium held in honour of the late founder of DAAR Communications, Raymond Dokpesi.
The event was organised by D-37, a group comprising political associates and allies of the late media entrepreneur and politician.
Speaking on President Tinubu’s June 12 nationwide address, Melaye said the speech failed to reflect the hardships confronting ordinary Nigerians.
He said, “I have a problem with every part of Tinubu’s June 12 broadcast speech because truth has no volume. If you increase it, it’s no longer the truth. If you decrease it, it’s no longer the truth. Everything in that speech did not represent the truth.
“The statistics faulted, intentions not genuine, and the president is speaking what he did not believe in. Every part of that speech is at variant with the practical experience of what Nigerians are going through. It carries no hope.”
Melaye also cited recent kidnappings and killings in Oyo and Kogi states as evidence of the country’s deteriorating security situation.
“On the issue of the abduction of Oyo School, it should not only be restricted to Ogbomosho. In my own state of Kogi, two days ago, students writing the English language for their WAEC examinations were kidnapped. These people came in, killed the vice-principal, a six-year-old child, and a 70-year-old man, and went away with the students.
“This story is the same across almost all the states of the entire country. I think for a government that is sensitive to its people, the president ought to have declared a state of emergency in the security of his country. The Nigerian security architecture is not that terrible.
“This is gross incompetence. The president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. On May 29 at Eagle Square, he had the Quran on his left hand and the Constitution of the Republic of Nigeria on the right,” he stated.
