Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has expressed dismay over President Muhammadu Buhari’s failure to deal decisively with ongoing insecurity, urging him to wake up.

Mr. Obasanjo, who spoke during a virtual interview with Toyin Falola, a historian on Sunday, said judging from his performance as a former military head of state, he thought Mr. Buhari would have done well in his fight against corruption.

“From his performance in his first outing as head of state, I thought he would also do well in fighting corruption,” Mr. Obasanjo said. “I did not know the nepotistic tendencies of President Buhari maybe because he was not exposed to that sort of situation when he worked with me.”

Further decrying the president’s nepotistic attitude, Obasanjo urged the president to wake up, pointing that the new service chiefs’ appointment didn’t call for celebration.

“If you are the commander-in-chief and banditry is taking place in your backyard, then you have to wake up. The president changed his service chiefs after they have been there for more than five years without any perceptible improvement and some people started jubilating,” Mr. Obasanjo explained.

Nigeria’s northern region has been ravaged repeatedly by so-called bandits and Mr. Buhari’s home state, Katsina, has not been spared as gunmen kidnapped in December, at least 300 schoolboys.

The government later secured the release of the boys.

Mr. Obasanjo, however, acknowledged, “I know what I believed was his limitations, and I have written about it. He wasn’t strong in economics, not all of us are strong in anything, but you need to have sufficient knowledge of it to direct the affairs.

“He wasn’t particularly too strong in foreign affairs, but I thought he was strong enough in the military.”

The former president was amongst influential politicians who supported Mr. Buhari on his way to becoming a democratically-elected president in 2015.