By Achadu Gabriel, Kaduna
As the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) felicitated with Muslims on the celebration of Eid-el-Kabir, it has however advised Nigerian political leaders to focus on resolving the security challenges bedeviling the nation and economic hardship instead of campaigning ahead for the 2027 elections.
The Forum also urged the Nigerian pilgrims in Saudi Arabia to remember the nation in their prayers for divine providence.
According to the forum, the celebration of Sallah is coming amid struggles under economic and existential challenges, spanning from high cost of living expenses, inflation, and rapid deterioration in the value of wages and salaries, among others.
A statement by the ACF National Publicity Secretary, Prof. Tukur Muhammad-Baba, added “These are in addition to the tough experiences of insurgency, terrorism and banditry in several locations but more acutely in the Northern states.”
The statement added that: “These experiences may not be new. It is however disturbing that public policy responses to them have remained ineffective, even as profligacy and reckless expenditures by public officials are in contrast to sacrifices by citizens.”
He referenced insertions in the 2025 federal budget for the provision of streetlights at a staggering and unimaginable costs of over N260 million each.
“That there has been no official denial of such crassly reckless and surreal insertions attests to the insensitivity of public officials and political representatives to the plight of ordinary Nigerians, whose living conditions continue to deteriorate all round (insufficiencies in or escalating costs of food, energy, health, educational opportunities, transportation, water supply, weak Naira, etc.). Going by precedence, such budgetary insertions are replicated in various ways at the state level.
“As ACF observed a year ago, the existential challenges are symptomatic of fundamental malaise in the political economy, calling for urgent public policy attention.
“Disappointingly, it will seem to be the case that the ruling party at the centre is more obsessed with unprecedented early campaigns, defections to it and other manoeuvres for re-election in 2027, amid putative celebrations of mid-term policy successes.
