A former political ally of President Bola Tinubu, Professor Usman Bugaje, has said the Man of the Year award given to the President would not erase the suffering he caused the citizens.

The former national secretary of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Professor Bugaje, said the Tinubu he knew when they were both in ACN was different from the man who has become President.

In an interview on Arise News on Thursday, Bugaje claimed that President Tinubu moved from being a progressive politician to almost a monarch.

“ThisDay has every right to declare whoever it wants as man of the year, and I don’t quite know what criteria and what methods they followed to arrive at that conclusion, but for all I know and for all many Nigerians who remember President Tinubu is the suffering that has been associated with his presidency since he arrived.

“Yes, I used to know him to be man of ideas with books around and we used to engage because if you remember I was the National Secretary of AC, which later became ACN, while I was still the National Secretary. So I had occasion to interact very closely and fairly consistently for a long period of time.

“I find all that has evaporated. I don’t see the ideas, I don’t see the dynamism, I don’t see that progressiveness. I see somebody who is almost turning into a monarch,” he said.

The Islamic Scholar condemned President Tinubu’s stance on the Tax Reform Bill during his media chat with selected journalists. He stated that the Tax Reform Bill was not submitted to the National Assembly in line with rules.

“In the last media chart, if I got it right, he did talk about the tax bill being sacrosanct. How can it be sacrosanct? This is a bill in front of the National Assembly. Even at that, not properly presented to the National Assembly, because when the Senate presented it was not on the order paper. And you can’t discuss by parliamentary rules and procedures any matter which is not already in the order paper. So this idea to smuggle things and this idea of coming through the back door creates a lot of suspicion,” he stated.

Bugaje advised the government to focus on ensuring food security and not taxation. He said without food security, there would be no peace in the country.

He continued, “I can go on, but let me make three points if you please. And this is not just about the President Tinubu. It covers almost all our political, if you like, leaders, or if you like the leadership that this democracy has produced in the last 25 years, characterized by three things.

“And whatever man of the year you become and whatever thing you want to do, unless you capture these things or you address these issues, is very difficult for anybody, no matter how well-intentioned. The fact that we don’t have an appreciation of the future.

“When government spokesmen speak and when ministers address us on issues around their own mandate, their ministries, they don’t seem to have the figures. They don’t seem to have the idea of the previous efforts. There is no vision. We can’t see.

“Let me just use one or two things to illustrate that, if you please. One, 2023, the grains deficit, just grains, that’s food that Nigerians eat, the deficit, that’s the difference between consumption and actual production, was about 30 million metric tons. Since then, we have had floods in Maiduguri, floods in Jigawa, floods in Taraba, floods in Zamfara, floods in so many other places, insecurity has escalated.

“So that must have affected us. So what is our grain deficit this year? And what are the measures to address this grain deficit? If you can’t have food, you can’t have peace. And you cannot talk about reforms, you cannot talk about taxation. So I don’t see a conversation that demonstrates a proper understanding of the issues in agriculture.”