Poor People Aren’t Happy With Public Office Holders, We See Angry Faces Everywhere-VP Shettima

Vice President Kashim Shettima has disclosed that the poor people are not happy with public office holders and the wealthy individuals in the country.

While noting that well-to-do families and public office holders form the minority , he has emphasized the need to improve the quality of governance.

Team@orientactualmags.com learned that Shettima  said this during the graduation ceremony of the Executive Intelligence Management Course 16 in Abuja on Saturday.

The programme which was organized by the National Institute for Security Studies  had personnel from different security agencies and nominees of state governments as participants.

Alhaji Kashim Shettima, a former senator and a one –time governor of Borno state, became the nation’s  Vice President on May 29, 2023.

‘All of us here belong to a tiny segment of the Nigerian population. And you don’t need a soothsayer to tell you that the poor people are angry with us. Go to the slums and mingle with the poor people. I am a native of Maiduguri (Borno state capital).  In the past, anytime a rich man brings a new car to his house, it (the house) used to be a place of pilgrimage.

People (used to) go and see not out of anger, but out of admiration. But now, as we cruise around in our bulletproof cars, one will see contempt in the eyes of the poor people. We have to improve the quality of governance. And what we have is a tiny window of not more than 10 to 20 years. Let’s improve the quality of governance’ he said.

The Vice President also noted that creation of job opportunities  and giving hope to the citizens would help in addressing insecurity in the country.

‘Let’s create jobs; let’s give hope to the populace. And once we create jobs, all this madness of insecurity will disappear. There won’t be Boko Haram and banditry if this is done, especially for us from the North. We can blame the bandits, but we in leadership positions owe it to posterity to address this.

They (the poor) are the most neglected segment of our society. You can hardly differentiate between them and their animals. Even the animals they rear belong to those in the city. So, there have to be kinetic and non-kinetic solutions to all the problems. Be it the IPOB agitation in the South-East; be it the challenges in the South-South; be it Boko Haram or rural banditry in the North-East, North-West, and North-Central’ he submitted while however expressing the need for Nigerians to support President Bola Tinubu’s efforts to change things for the better in the country.

 ‘I want to ask you to give the President the benefit of the doubt. Let us support him. Let us rally around and be reassured that he is determined to redefine the meaning and concept of modern leadership, and he is ever ready to reposition the Nigerian nation. But without the support of you and I, he can’t do much’  Shettima said.

‘It’s easy to predict failure. But what about success, what is the end result of failure? It is destruction. Just two million Syrians knocking on the doors of Europe, and they caused Brexit. They caused the emergence of Trump in America. So, how do you proceed? Those people who are agitating for the breakup of this nation, or the implosion of this country, they hardly think beyond their noses.

They don’t think beyond the depth of their pockets. Surviving their way on the growth of the innocent and the agonies of our people will not do us any good’ he added.

Also speaking, the Director-General of the Department of State Services, Yusuf Bichi, said the security agency would soon begin the production of unmanned aerial vehicles, AK-47s, and other weapons that would be used by its personnel.

This, he noted, would be done  to reduce the heavy reliance on foreign countries for weapons and the huge resources for the procurement of such weapons.

‘We shall support the institute in its training programmes. I care for the welfare of our staff members, active and retired. We shall never go back on that. We’ll also continue to pay attention to our research and development.

In fact, sooner or later, we shall start eating what we produce, and we will produce what we eat. This is coded. It means that we shall start deploying some of the assets we have or the platforms we produce by ourselves, including unmanned aerial vehicles. We are producing our AK-47.

When we reach the destination, we will save the country from the pain of the resources being chunked out to buy such weapons.

We shall continue to appreciate all the agencies that partner with us in the journey so far. And I promise the other security agencies that the DSS will continue to provide you with proactive intelligence to drive your operations’ he said-Team@orientactualmags.com
Do you have any information you wish to share with us? Do you want us to cover your event or programme? Kindly send SMS to 08059100286, 09094171980. Thank you