Abiodun Ajiboye, an APC chieftain and cultural orientation official, says Nigeria lost its way decades ago. He spoke Tuesday on Arise Television's Prime Time show.
Ajiboye heads the National Institute for Cultural Orientation. He blamed successive administrations for abandoning development blueprints.
Infrastructure projects lack coordination across the country, he argued. Many schemes were drawn up but left gathering dust for years.
Some initiatives President Bola Tinubu is now pursuing date back to 1983. Previous governments simply ignored them, Ajiboye noted.
He expressed deep concern about something else too. Nigeria hasn't deliberately fostered patriotism and nationalism among its citizens.
"The situation with Nigeria is like a country that has existed since 1960, with no direction in terms of infrastructure," Ajiboye said. "We didn't have any direction."
He pointed to specific examples in his remarks. "Some of the infrastructure projects that President Bola Tinubu is executing now are development plans of 1983 that subsequent governments did not touch."
According to him, fixing Nigeria's problems requires every person to step up. Citizens must treat national challenges as their own responsibility.
"A conscious effort wasn't made to build a society of nationalistic, patriotic and civil Nigerians," Ajiboye told viewers. "The problems of Nigeria should be every individual's problem."
