The president gave the explanation in an
interview with Mansur Liman of the BBC Hausa
service on Christmas eve. He also spoke on his
government’s ‘success’ at defeating the Boko
Haram insurgents.
PREMIUM TIMES’ Sani Tukur translated the interview;
Q : You recently submitted the biggest budget
estimates in Nigeria’s history to the National
Assembly, and this came at a time the price of oil
has drastically gone down in world markets. How
do you intend to get money to fund the budget?
Buhari: As a government, we inherited N1.5
trillion domestic debt and when foreign debt is
added we have about N2.2 trillion. Everybody
knows Nigeria is not a poor country, we are rich, and we have human resources, the problem had
been that leadership did not take seriously,
curbing corrupt tendencies.
Apart from highlighting our debt profile, we have
also shown the changes we have made in the
Customs for instance, how; much we are making
from the Customs service, how much from
petroleum, that is NNPC; how much we are
making from the ports. There have been lots of
leakages in these sectors. If we block these leakages, we would make much more money run the country despite the fall in the price of oil.
Q : Are you sure you can block all the leakages?
Because if one looks at it, it was just the leaders
of these agencies that were changed while most of
the lieutenants who were part of the system of
the “leakages” are still in place. What do you
think would change to make sure that “business
as usual” does not continue and Nigeria would
get those monies?
A : It is generally believed that a fish begins to rot
from the head; once the head is rotten, the whole
body is also rotten. We have tried to remove all
the heads of the organisations, and most of the
lieutenants have been changed. A lot is
happening in this government that people do not
appear to understand; many permanent
secretaries of ministries have been changed; we
used to have 42 ministers, now we have 36
because the constitution requires that each state of the federation must have a minister; we used
to have 42 ministries, now we have 24.
Q : You have also allocated 30 per cent of the
budget to capital projects; what informed that
decision?
A : It is a must. Remember during the campaigns,
we said Nigeria is facing three things and nobody
disputed that assertion. Firstly; there was
widespread insecurity, war in the north east,
while the country’s oil was being stolen at random in the south; secondly; there is massive
unemployment, 62 per cent of the nation’s
population are youth from the age of 35 years
downward; most of them are unemployed,
including those who went to school and those
who did not, that is a serious problem. Therefore,
it has become necessary to restore peace and
create employment.
That is why we are returning to agriculture and
mineral resources. Thirdly, bribery and corruption was basically suffocating the country.
If we don’t kill these monsters, this country
would go down.
That is why those who stole monies meant for
arms procurement and shared it among
themselves are being arrested and are being
shown documents, so that they would be asked to
refund the money or face prosecution; we would
use those documents to prove what they stole,
collect all the assets acquired from the proceeds and then jail them.
Q : You have initiated a programme in which poor
and vulnerable Nigerians would be paid N5,000
monthly; what have you put in place to ensure
that there is justice and fairness in the running of
this programme?
A : It is not possible for everyone needing it to get
it; but the Federal Government has said it would
collaborate with the states and local governments.
At the local government level, almost everyone knows each other. It would be easy to identify
those to give who would go into trading and how
to get it back. It would be like a cooperative and
we all know how it operates. Also, state
governments would identify those who have
capacity to employ more people and all we need
to do is to empower them. Our people already
know how to go about implementing these
modalities to create employment for the citizens.
Q : You earlier mentioned Boko Haram. After your assumption of office, you gave a deadline of December to bring an end to Boko Haram
insurgency. We are almost at the end of
December, does it mean you and the armed
forces have failed?
A : I want people to understand that after I settled
down and got good grasp of what the country is
going through, we removed all the service chiefs
and appointed new ones. We also undertook an
investigation and found out how the monies
meant for arms procurement were diverted and
shared by officials in the last administration.
They sent the boys to the war front without arms
and ammunition, leading some of them to mutiny
after which they were arrested and detained.
We have been able to raise money and fund the
war. Go and ask the people of Borno, Yobe and
Adamawa; how many of their local governments
were under the control of insurgents? And how
many are currently still under the insurgents?
May be we would not win the war completely by
the end of the month, but the insurgents have
now resorted to putting on explosive vests on
young children, mostly girls aged 15 and below
and then sending them to markets, mosques and
churches to detonate. Boko Haram themselves
know that the era of them taking over
communities and local governments are over. If people would be fair to us, they would know that
the Nigerian Army has basically met the deadline
and are winning the war. You cannot find any
significant number of Boko Haram members in
Adamawa, and Yobe, only may be in about three
local governments of Borno in the area around
our borders with Chad Republic. They are not in
a position to threaten Nigeria now, so we have
won.
