Nigerians may have expected change to work for them in their own way, President Muhammadu Buhari said, Monday, stating that the change mantra has gone through hell in the first year of his administration.
Buhari 73, who took over the reins of government on the 29th of May last year, also noted that he was still in shock over the impact of Former President Goodluck Jonathan’s show of magnanimity to concede defeat after the 2015 election.
He was speaking at an interactive session with State House Correspondents at the Presidential Villa Abuja, as part of meetings held to commemorate the President’s one year in office.
“Because we became a mono-economy of oil rich Nigeria, everybody relied on oil and forgot about solid minerals, agriculture, making and exploring things, we recently just found out that we are poor because we don’t have anything to fall back to.
“This is the condition we found ourselves and this change mantra had to go through hell up till yesterday.
And for you to talk to whoever came to visit us throughout that year I wonder how each of your diaries would be, because people were expecting this change mantra in their own way.
How do you define change? Luckily our party identified three major items, security, economy and corruption” he said.
Speaking about his experience in government in the last one year, the President said it may take his cabinet till the end of the fourth quarter to recover from the padding experience.
He also spoke about how permanent secretaries tried to sabotage the effort of his administration as they insisted on following their known way of going things.
“I underrated the influence of the PDP for 16 years watching from outside as 8 consecutive governments. The experience of the staff, their commitment and zeal is different from what it is now. 16 years of development in the life of a developing nation is a long time.
“This is where I pay my respect to former President Goodluck Jonathan.
This is actually a privileged information for you. He called me at a quarter past five in the evening. He said good evening your excellency Sir and I said good evening. He said, I have called to congratulate you that I have conceded deceit. Of course there was dead silence on my end , because I did not expect it. I was shocked.
“I did not expect it because after 16 sixteen years the man was a deputy governor, governor, Vice President and was President for six years. For him to have conceded defeat even before the result was announced by INEC I think it was quiet generous and gracious of him.
“Abdulsalami recognised the generosity of Jonathan to concede deceit and said we should go and thank him immediately and that was the first time I came here” he said.
Explaining that he had to trim the number of ministries from 42 to 24 he said “We had to cut down half the number of permanent secretaries and then do some cross postings. The permanent secretaries that were the for the past five to seven years the only thing that they knew is how things were done in the previous years.
“Whatever we did in the campaign, I fact we were saying rubbish and that made it very difficult for us”.
Speaking on the budget episode, the President said “I think we will recover by the fourth quarter of the year. There were very serious development which I never knew about.
“It was a nasty experience for us. It was also a nasty experience for some of the ministers who were never in government, for them to sit down day and night to work. I saw them some of them literarily lost weight because they were sleeping less and eating less. Working on every kobo to be spent.
The President said his government was still trying to get the cooperation of the international community in a bid to recover the funds looted from the coffers of government, especially the $2.1billion meant for military hardware and could not afford to be very flippant about the details.
“We have to do it with a lot of respect to the judiciary. We can’t go out and talk too much we have to allow the judiciary to do their work.
We give them the facts,the name , country, bank account. If you talk too much technicalities will come in, them we will realise less than what we want to realise” he said.
