A Labour Party (LP) chieftain, George Muoghalu, has advised President Bola Tinubu to address the challenges facing the country while calling for support for the president.

Mr Muoghalu, also the immediate past director-general of National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), said this in an interview with journalists on Sunday in Abuja.

He said that though it was too early to expect magic from the Tinubu-led administration, something must still be done to alleviate the sufferings of Nigerians.

Mr Muoghalu expressed his sympathy for Mr Tinubu on the challenges facing the country, most of which, he said, were inherited by his administration.

Mr Muoghalu said that the president deserved his prayers and those of Nigerians.

“I’ll keep praying for the president because the challenges are enormous. The difficulty in the land is alarming and people are feeling it.

“So, my prayer is that God should give him the wisdom, help him, strengthen him with good health so that he will be able to see how he can alleviate the sufferings in the land.

“While I agree that the time is too short for us to expect magical results, I still believe that something has to be done to reduce the pressure on the people.

“As to whether there’s difficulty in the land, there’s difficulty, and the challenges were not necessarily caused by the president.

“But one thing you must understand is that once the buck stops on your table, you must take all the blame and also take all the credits,’’ he said.

The LP chieftain appealed to citizens to continue to be patient with the president, even as he urged leaders to attend to the needs of the citizens.

On the four members of the House of Representatives who recently defected from LP to APC, Mr Muoghalu advised them to vacate their seats and go back to the poll to test their popularity.

He advised elected officers to always be guided by their conscience and the wishes of their people before deflecting from the political platform on which they were elected to another.

“The law provides for it and I am of the school of the thought that if you are leaving an office, please leave the position you occupy.

“They need to go and test their popularity again. They should be able to go back and let their people re-endorse them that we support what you have done,” he said.

Mr Muoghalu, a governorship aspirant on the platform of LP, said the crisis rocking the party was nothing strange.

“It is like every other party and it is due to the difference in members’ interests and ambition,” he said.

According to him, every other political party has its challenges at any point in time, but the ability to manage the crisis makes the difference.

“The issue of disagreements will always come in any political party because we are talking about human beings. There’s no way you expect my behaviour and yours to align.

“There must be areas of disagreement. Disagreements may be due to my ambition or your ambition. Once there’s that disagreement, there’s going to be a challenge. It’s about how we manage the challenge,” he said.

The former NIWA managing director also said that he didn’t believe in the insinuations that the crisis within LP was being fuelled by the ruling All Progressives Party (APC) because of the 2027 general elections.

He said that there was no empirical evidence or facts to support such insinuations.

“For me, the important thing is that go and manage your party well.

“A political party is a human organisation. Try as much as possible to accommodate various interests and views. That’s why it is a democracy.

“You cannot be authoritarian and expect that things will go smoothly. Look at whatever issue that is raised and consider it on its merit,” he said.

Expressing his views on the six-year single tenure bill recently rejected by the House of Representatives, Mr Muoghalu said that he did not see anything wrong with the bill.

He, however, said that in democracy, the minority would always have their say while the majority would have their ways.

Mr Muoghalu also said there was nothing wrong with the plan by the sponsors of the rejected bill to re-present it before their colleagues in the house of representatives.

“That is the beauty of democracy for you, because they’re acting based on their conviction, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

“Between now and the time they will re-present the bill, a lot of them (in the house of representatives) may have changed their minds.

“They may have had more opportunity to engage the legislators themselves one-on-one and be able to explain their positions.

“Some of the lawmakers might have reacted spontaneously without looking deep into the arguments they were presenting.

“But now, when they have the time to look at it again and they are individually convinced, there may be a change in their positions and the story will be different,” Mr Muoghalu said.

(NAN)