Speaking today while receiving members of some northern groups, led by Alhaji Maitama Sule and the Northern Elders Forum, in Abuja, Buhari also said the incoming administration will, in the short term, lay emphasis on agriculture and mining to deal with the challenge of youth unemployment.
According to him, the task before the northern leaders, especially the clergy, is to help sensitise the public that the change they desire and voted for, cannot happen overnight.
He pointed out that it took 16 years to destroy the nation’s economy, noting that the nation earned
more within the last 16 years under the Peoples Democratic Party, than it did since 1914, but that most of it was frittered away. Punch reports that he said:
“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 of 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.”
