President Muhammadu Buhari has urged Nigerian elites to judge his administration with fairness, arguing that his administration has done more for the country with less resources.
Buhari made this appeal at the closing of the first-year ministerial performance review retreat held in Abuja on Tuesday.
“I want the Nigerian elites, please encourage them, to judge us fairly,” Buhari said.
He said the average production of oil in the country, from 1999 to 2014, was 2.1 million barrels per day sold at an average price of $100.
“When we came, it collapsed to $37, $38 per barrel, you know it. And the militants were unleashed on the administration, and the production went down to half a million barrels per day.
“I want you to please reflect, what was the condition of the infrastructure then, in spite of those earnings. The roads, the rail is dead and there was no power, up till now no power; where does the money go?”
The President said he was “doing my best” to fight corruption by “trying to follow the system” in contrast to his brief military regime in 1984 when he arbitrarily rounded up politicians, threw them in jail, and required them to prove their innocence.
Now “I’m being called ‘baba go slow’,” he said.