Nigerians are forgetful, says Buhari in a self-appraisal interview with NTA. See important takeaways from the chat

President Buhari begs Nigerians to be patient with him

President Muhammadu Buhari granted another televised interview to the National Television Authority (NTA) on Friday evening where he talked about issues such as the state of the economy, #EndSARS protest, insecurity, corruption in Nigeria, and his administration generally.

Economy

The President said he is not happy with the low performance of the economy as it has been a thing of concern to his administration.

He said his administration was doing everything possible to improve the economy by reaching out to the international community to allow their multinational firms to come to Nigeria and establish their presence by employing Nigerians to pick up the economy.

Insecurity

Buhari said his government will not spare bandits, agitators and arsonists. He stated that his administration won’t allow confusion just like how the EndSARS protests.

He said: “How can you go to police station.. kill the police (if they are there), loot the armoury, and burn the place.. what do you want to achieve, go and open prison and allow criminals that have been tried through the legal system and let them loose on the society and then how can the Government sit and allow this confusion to be perpetrated. No Government can allow confusion.” He stated.

“Look at the EndSARS incident in Lagos, the previous governor of Lagos State bought 200 buses to complement the transportation in Lagos and he built a railway but they went there and burnt them.

“The present Governor made an album and came to see me, and I say thank you very much. I took the album and put it in my archives and told him to tell the Lagosians to work because we don’t have the money after an administration bought 200 buses. So let them work.”

On bandits, agitators and arsonists he said

He said: “I mean more than fire for fire, we will arrest them. What I hope is to arrest them, try them and give them very bad publicity, and jail them. So that people will know that if you misbehave, you won’t get away with it.”

Corruption

On corruption, President Buhari said his administration has done a lot and it was high time special courts were established to try several corruption cases currently stuck in conventional courts.

Buhari said, “Nigerians, I think, are very forgetful. I am very pleased that the majority of Nigerians think that this administration, under the circumstance, are (sic) doing their (sic) best but people who misappropriated funds are elected members either at state or federal level…

“You can accuse them or try to prove that when they were elected members of the House of Reps and they are given ministries and so on, they had only one house and maybe a wife but now they have several houses may be in Abuja, maybe in Lagos, so, rarely, if you try to work out their legitimacy limit, viz-a-viz their expenditure, they will be exposed.”

“You have instances of cases lasting for as long as 10 years before they are determined and in some cases, judges handling the cases may die. But if there are special courts, there will be a time frame to conclude the corruption cases and not dragging on unnecessarily,” he said.

On his administration

The President said , “No matter how reluctantly, major of Nigerians are understanding me and appreciating the efforts we are making because right from the get-go, we identified our problem, one security; two, economy and try to fight corruption, people getting something for nothing, we have to make sure that people earn their living and they defend it.”

He said, “I want Nigerians to be fair to this administration. They should reflect seriously on the time we came in, especially relative to the North East and the South-South.

“They should consider where we are now, the resources, how much oil we are producing; the previous administration before me was producing 2.1 million barrels per day at the price cost of $100 per barrel.

“When we came in, militants in the South-South were unleashed on this administration and production went down to half a million barrels per day and then in the market, the oil market collapsed.

“I would like Nigerians to reflect on those in terms of resources and I believe that we have not done very badly.”

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