President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday criticised previous Nigerian administrations for “lack of imagination.”
He said they failed to provide needed infrastructure despite huge revenues, even as he singled out Olusegun Obasanjo, who was president from 1999 to 2007, for spending over $15 billion dollars on power without achieving much.
Mr Obasanjo, a former supporter of Mr Buhari, is one of the fiercest critics of the incumbent president. He had in January written a damning letter to Mr Buhari asking him not to seek re-election in 2019 due to poor performance.
Speaking when he received a delegation of Buhari Support Organisation (BSO) at the Presidential Villa Tuesday, the president said he often wondered why people in authority chose to send their children outside the country to acquire education while they fail to develop the country.
“I wonder want kind of Nigerians they want their children to come and work with. I think there is a lot of lack of imagination.
“Because if you’re fighting for the country then you shouldn’t be misappropriating or misapplying the fund the way people do,” he said.
Mr Buhari thanked members of the support group for standing by him without being prompted to do so.
“Nobody is paying you for what you have been doing. It is because from the bottom of your hearts; you exposed yourselves by identifying with me through opposition to success and after the success.
“I don’t know how many of you people will say what the hell you got out of it. You can only get satisfaction through voluntary and understandable way of believing in issues you do.
“You are only expecting your return from God and you are looking for the future of the country-your children and grand children.”
The president told the gathering that he recently made some statements. He said because some of them may have missed it due to absence of electricity, he had to repeat it.
He said he threw a challenge to anyone to check either in Europe, Asia or America that between 1999 and 2014, Nigeria was producing 2.1 million barrels per day of crude at an average cost of $100 per barrel.
He said the price even went up to $143.
“So Nigeria was earning 2.1 million times 100 times 16 years, 7 days a week.
“When we came, it collapsed to $37-38 and it was oscillating between $40 and $54 sometimes.
“ I went to the Governor of Central Bank, thank goodness I did not sack him, he is still there. I went with my cap in my hand and say oya. He said there was no savings, only debt,” Mr Buhari said.
During the 16 years the president referenced, Nigeria was governed by three presidents, Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007), Umaru Yar’Adua (2007 to 2010), and Goodluck Jonathan (2010 to 2015).
The president told the group of supporters that when he assumed office, most of the roads in Nigeria were in terrible condition, adding “some of them were not repaired since PTF days.”
PTF is the Petroleum Trust Fund set up by late Head of State, Sani Abacha, in 1994 to utilise the proceeds of a petrol price increase. Mr Buhari headed the PTF, which was reputed to have constructed many road projects across the country while the military dictator stole Nigeria blind.
Mr Buhari, who has been criticised for looking the other way while Mr Abacha stole billions of dollars from public treasury while in office, again justified his working with the dictator.
“No matter what opinion you have about Abacha,” he said, “I agreed to work with him and the roads we did from PTF exist from here to Port Harcourt, to Onitsha, to Benin and so on.”
He said the agency also intervened in education and medical care among others.
Mr Buhari also said the railway in Nigeria “was killed and one of the former Heads of State between that time was bragging that he spent more than 15 billion American dollars, not Naira, on power. Where is the power? Where is the power? And now we have to pay the debts,” he said, in apparent reference to Mr Obasanjo.
