Veteran politician and prominent northern leader, Alhaji Othman Tofa, has identified sycophantic tendencies among President Goodluck Jonathan’s aides and escalating corruption in the country as the bane of his administration.

Alhaji Tofa, who spoke with Sunday Mirror, said the major defect of the President is the people around him, masquerading as his aides.

According him, “whatever is the defect of Jonathan’s government, the most disturbing one is the people he appointed as his aides, most of whom are incompetent, dishonest, incapable of doing anything right and lacking nationalistic ideals.”

To him, this remains the shortcoming of the President as he does not have “the right kind of team needed by his office to move the country forward”.

The Kano politician and immediate past Chairman of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), added that what the President needed to do to redeem the situation was to ensure that wide consultations took place, outside his “kitchen cabinet”, that most of his ministers and advisers only confronted him with those things they believed he would want to hear, while their primary interest in government was to pursue their personal economic interest.

The former presidential candidate on the platform of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC) in the controversial June 12, 1993 presidential election, believes strongly that there are capable Nigerians outside the government who can be trusted and have the capabilities of moving this country to greater heights.

He added, “From what I have seen, the people around him today are terrible and are source of his weakness, which he needs to get rid of because anybody in position, no matter how intelligent, if he doesn’t have the right team to work with, he is obviously bound to fail.”

On the issue of corruption, he cautioned leaders against tampering with public funds, saying the moment a leader tampered with public money: “If it’s one kobo, you have not only derailed but lost your gut to sanction your subordinates when they commit similar offence”. Tofa maintained that whoever would emerge Nigeria’s president should be such a person with no interest in public money.

On the issue of merger among some opposition parties, he stated that the success would depend largely on the ability and courage of the leaders to dump their personal ambition.

“They should not overlord people with their ambition; there must be sacrifices by the parties involved and see the issue as one embarked upon to ensure the survival of democracy, rather than opportunity to climb to power, otherwise the party to be so merged will be bedevilled with factions that will take them back to square one.

The political bigwig, who said he was on sabbatical from the ANPP, accused the party leaders of insincerity, which he said caused them some of their stronghold.

“In Kano, we in the ANPP lost to the PDP in the governorship election because of internal sabotage. “We have a lot of hypocrites who are members of the party only within; once in Abuja or somewhere else, they are PDP members; they work relentlessly for the party which employed them to sabotage their own party and they are doing so because of their interest in federal appointments or some kind of favour from the PDP,”, he regrettted.

http://nationalmirroronline.net/new/jonathan-surrounds-self-with-sycophants-as-aides-tofa/

Advice no be curse oh. Its not about religion, its not about region. Posterity will remember you for either good or bad. A word is enough for the wise. To avoid stories that touch.

All of them are the same including Tofa . GEJ give us 24hrs
light so that you go get our vote by 2015,
this is my own concern right now.

So,we now have 24 hours power in 9ja?When did dat happen.

Tofa just dey find out about the 40 man Laptop crew..... smh..

Jonathan chose to surround himself with mediocres who brown-nose him for their selfish interest! The earlier he rediscover himself and do away with sycophants the better for him!