President Muhammadu Buhari says past administrations in the country since the restoration of democracy in 1999 deserved to be blamed for the country’s woes.
He said this on Thursday night at the Presidential Villa during a public presentation of a pictorial book titled, “Buhari: A New Beginning” and Conversation themed: “Creative Youth as Drivers of the Change Agenda”.
He accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led administrations of Olusegun Obasanjo, Umar Yar’adua and Goodluck Jonathan of mismanaging the country for the past 16 years.
Buhari said, “My dear countrymen especially the youths, you have a fantastic country, God has endowed Nigeria with human and material resources.
“I’m going to bore you with what we met, I know I’m being accused in the papers of passing the buck. But passing the buck is sometimes absolutely necessary to remind people who take things for granted.
“When we came in by some unfortunate coincidence, I scream to high heavens because I had promised a lot while seeking vote. I said where are the savings? There was none. There was no infrastructure, power, rails, roads, there was none. What did we spend the money on? I was told buying food and petrol.
“Where were the billions going? We conducted a study and found out that the oil marketers were committing fraud on at least one third of what they were importing, which is about 25 per cent of our foreign exchange.
“The youths must watch our elites. The condition we found ourselves, it is unpatriotic for anybody to pretend that economically we have not had a problem.
“We have gone into the farms, I congratulate some of the governors and by the grace of God by the end of this government we will be exporting rice and grains. So all the money alleged to have been used to import will be available to sustain development.
“I have bored you with this long explanation because there are things that could be hidden from you by those that had mismanaged the country in the last 16, 17 years.”
Dolapo is a writer and journalist who works with YNaija. He has interests in Christianity, politics and sports.
Leave a reply