SAN FRANCISCO, September 08, (THEWILL) – President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday said Nigerian elites should judge his administration with fairness. The President was speaking at the closing of the first-year ministerial performance review retreat held in Abuja.
“I want the Nigerian elites, please encourage them, to judge us fairly,” Buhari said, arguing that his administration has done more for the country with less resources.
The President 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 also addressed the long-running conflict between herders and farmers, blaming past leaders who encroached cattle routes for the crisis.
While the President maintained that the conflict had nothing to do with ethnicity or religion, he however blamed the lingering farmer-herder crisis on the leadership of the first republic. According to Buhari, “the First Republic leadership is the most irresponsible set of leadership we’ve ever had” .
“I asked the Minister of Agriculture to get a gazette of the early sixties, which delineated the cattle routes, the grazing areas. So any cattle rearer that allows his cattle to go to somebody’s farm is arrested, taken before a court. The farmer is called to submit his bill. And if the cattle rearer cannot pay, his cattle are sold. But subsequent leaders encroached on the cattle routes, took over the cattle areas”, the President remarked.
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