Nigerians who criticize the current administration in the country should do so on the basis of fairness, President Muhammadu Buhari has said.
He said the elite, who are love to criticize his administration, should first consider the state of the country he inherited in May 2015.
According to a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, the
Buhari said this call while receiving the Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Christian Pilgrims Commission, Rev. Yakubu Pam, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, his spokesman, Femi Adesina, said in a statement titled “Criticise us fairly, President Buhari appeals to Nigerian elite.”
“Those criticising the administration should be fair in terms of reflecting on where we were before we came, where we are now and what resources are available to us and what we have done with the limited resources.
“We had to struggle paying debts, investing in road repairs and rebuilding, to revamp the rail and try to get power.
“This is what I hope the elite when they want to criticise will use to compare notes.”
Based in on his own criteria, the president gave his administration a pass mark on the security situation in the North East.
One of Buhri’s ardent critics is the Revered Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese. Kukah had in his Christmas message accused the Buhari administration of not living up to the expectations of Nigerians due to the various economic and security challenges affecting the nation.
He alleged that Buhari was “institutionalising northern hegemony against national interests.”
“This government owes the nation an explanation as to where it is headed as we seem to journey into darkness.
“The spilling of this blood must be related to a more sinister plot that is beyond our comprehension…
“Every honest Nigerian knows that there is no way any non-Northern Muslim President could have done a fraction of what President Buhari has done by his nepotism and gotten away with it.
“There would have been a military coup a long time ago or we would have been at war.”
While Buhari admitted that there still exist what he termed“occasional Boko Haram problems,” he said there was a lot of improvement when compared to the past experience of the residents of the affected states.
“What was the situation when we came? Try and ask people from Borno or from Adamawa for that matter and Yobe. What was the condition before we came and what is the condition now?
“Still, there are problems in Borno and Yobe, there are occasional Boko Haram problems, but they know the difference because a lot of them moved out of their states and moved to Kaduna, Kano, and here (in Abuja).
“We were not spared of the attacks at a time. The government is doing its best and I hope that eventually, our best will be good enough.”
Pam informed the President about some of the activities of the commission since he was appointed last July.
Among these were the organisation of the Peace Summit on Southern Kaduna and peace-building efforts in Plateau, Benue, Taraba and Nasarawa States.