Buhari urges Nigerians to Exercise Patience while expecting Change
Gen. Mohammadu Buhari has advised that Nigerians should not expect change to happen overnight as his incoming administration will address agriculture and mining first so as to deal with the challenge of youth unemployment.
Buhari said this on Sunday in Abuja, while receiving members of some northern groups, including the Northern Elders Forum, led by Alhaji Maitama Sule.
He urged the northern leaders to help sensitise the people to exercise patience, saying, “The biggest message is to try and persuade the people that it is not possible to change the state of affairs now. It took 16 years and those 16 years, most of you know it better than myself, Nigeria earned revenue more than what it earned from 1914 to then.
“You know that we used to have Nigeria Airways, Nigeria National Shipping Line, Nigeria Railways. Where are they now? Where is the infrastructure? Between then and now and what we earned in-between and what is on the ground.
“That is how efficiently how the PDP managed Nigeria in the last 16 years. Now we have invariably inherited all the problems, especially in the north east.”
Buhari added, “So, you have to convince your constituencies that you have virtually arrived at the wrong time and that they have to temper their expectation with some justice towards the leadership.
“I think whatever has to be deployed especially in the churches and mosques, this is the quickest way to communicate this to the ordinary people, continue to remind them if all the things I said in all the states I visited.
“We picked three fundamental problems. The first is security. The country has to be secured before anything can be put in place and then the economy. The fact is that more than 60 per cent of the Nigerian population are youths and most of them, whether they have been to school or not, are unemployed and this is the biggest danger if we don’t know it.”