President Muhammadu Buhari has confessed that the change mantra he introduced to turn the country around went through hell in his first year in office.
He said that before taking over the mantle of leadership properly, he had underrated the extent of rot and damage which the 16 year of Peoples Democratic Party (PD) had done to the nation’s economy and other sectors.
President Buhari said that it was only when he began to operate properly that he discovered the rot and serious damage.
President Buhari, who spoke when he hosted news men, under the aegis of State House Press Corps (SHPC) to Democracy Day luncheon at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Monday said: “I underrated the influence of the PDP for 16 years, watching from outside at eight consecutive governments.”
The President admitted that whatever he and his political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) did in the campaign could not be praticalised because of the realities they met on the ground.
“Things were even more difficult during the budget which you all know about. For somebody like me, for the first time, I heard what is called padding.
“I think we will recover by the fourth quarter of the year, from what padding means, especially for ministers who had to implement what padding contains. These were very serious development which I never knew about.
“So, really, 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 some of them literaly lost weight because they were sleeping less and eating less. “They were Working on every kobo to be spent.”
President Buhari further regretted that Nigeria, for a long time, embraced mono-economy, relying solely on oil and forgetting about solid minerals, agriculture, making and exploring things.
He said that because of such miscalculation, “we recently just found out that we are poor because we don’t have anything to fall back on. 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.
“Because we were not part of those 16 years, this is where we found ourselves and this is no joke.”
The President then pitied the nation’s information minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed who has to be explaining and defending government policies and action almost everyday.
“One of the men I pity is Lai Mohammed. Everyday, he is on TV explaining our performance or lack of it.” [myad]