A former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, Professor Usman Yusuf has expressed concern about the security situation in the country, saying that the Tinubu administration must ensure that it lives up to expectation by wining the war against terrorism and insecurity.
Discussing how former president Muhammadu Buhari is now hunted by a danger he failed to successfully address, the professor of hematology said the former president cannot visit his native hometown, Daura, without the protection of heavily armed security personnel, adding that such was not the character of former president Shehu Shagari who freely and simply frequented his Sokoto home after serving as President.
Yusuf also emphasized the inability of former military Chief of Army Staff and other political figures to return to their ancestral homes without extensive security measures.
He said the late President Shehu Shagari could freely access his Sokoto home without such security arrangements.
Yusuf, who expressed grave concern about the prevailing insecurity in the country, said the challenge is an outcome of poverty and failure of government to address issues at the grassroots level.
The former NHIS boss who spoke in an interview with Daily Trust TV, stated: “You finish as Chief of Army Staff and you can’t go back to your ancestral home to spend the weekend without those big guns security. This is not how leaders in the past lived. Late President Shehu Shagari went back to Sokoto and you could access his home from the main road. You could go in and see him. Even former President Muhammadu Buhari cannot stay in Daura without those big guns.”
“You finish all your Abuja trip and you cannot go back home. And that is why everybody is in Abuja as an IDP. All of us carried the pregnancy and gave birth to these monsters we call insecurity.”
“Now Abuja is not safe, everybody is sweating under the collar because it’s closing in on the seat of power. If you ignore the grassroots and leave the poverty, do you think it’s going to remain there? No, it will get to you. And this is not surprising for me, it’s going to get worse if we don’t take care of this.”
