The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has expressed disappointment that the ruling All Progressives Congress led by President Bola Tinubu is more obsessed with unprecedented early campaigns, defections to its fold and other maneuvers for re-election in 2027, rather than addressing the security challenges and other existential challenges confronting the nation.
In a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Professor Muhammad-Baba, ACF lamented that public policy responses to the insecurity situation, especially in the Northern part of the country, has remained ineffective, even as profligacy and reckless expenditures by public officials are in contrast to sacrifices by citizens.
According to the statement, “A most perverse illustration of reckless profligacy of public expenditure has been the revelation about insertions, in the 2025 Federal budget, for the provision of streetlights at a staggering and unimaginable costs of over N260 million Naira each.
“That there has to date been no official denial of such crassly reckless and surreal insertions attests to the insensitivity of public officials and political repre-sentatives to the plight of ordinary Nigerians, whose living conditions continue to deteriorate all round.
“Going by precedent, such budgetary insertions are replicated in various ways at state level. As ACF observed a year ago, the existential challenges above are symptomatic of fundamental malaise in the political economy calling for urgent public policy attention”.