President Buhari blames elites for mismanaging Nigeria

Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, has said if he wins the 2019 elections and spends another four years in office, he will leave some difference.

“I will leave some difference in that office,” the president told Nigerians living in the United States of America on Thursday.

Meeting with the Nigerian community on the margins of the 73rd United Nations General Assembly in New York, the president regretted that the elite allowed Nigeria to be mismanaged for 16 years of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rule, without as much as raising a voice in consternation.

“They didn’t say a word,” Mr Buhari declared.

A statement by his spokesperson, Femi Adesina, on Friday said “Under the PTF (Petroleum Trust Fund, of which he was Chairman), we did roads from Lagos to Abuja, to Onitsha, to Port Harcourt. Since then, the roads were not done – between 1999 and 2015- yet the elite did not say a word.

“I was called Baba Go Slow. Those who were going fast, where did they get to?

“In 1983, military officers gathered, and made me Head of State. I packed the politicians into jail, told them they were guilty until they could prove their innocence. We seized what they had looted, but after I myself was put in detention, the politicians were given back what they had looted. How many elite complained about that?

“Three times I contested elections; three times I went to court after the elections were rigged against me. No justice, but I said ‘God dey.’

“It was mainly the ordinary people that stood by me. That is why I am always conscious of them. They are my constituency. Even pregnant women on the queue would fall into labour, go to have their babies, and still come back to vote for me. I will keep doing my best for the country.”

The diaspora Nigerians, in their scores, are top flight professionals drawn from fields like medicine, engineering, sports, the arts, investment, academia, politics, agriculture, transport, education, publishing, and many others.