Monday, 25 November 2024

#PresidentialMediaChat: The 6 things we learned from Buhari tonight

 

President Muhammadu Buhari has just wound down his maiden media chat. He was grilled by three journalists and a story-teller who loved to hear herself speak.

Here are six things that struck us as we watched the President address the nation in a more informal, relaxed setting.

1. Ministers who are found corrupt in his cabinet will be sacked, President Muhammadu Buhari promised. He asked for evidence regarding whether any member of his cabinet was being tried for corruption in any court at the time they were named.

“I would not knowingly have appointed anyone tainted with corruption into my cabinet. Mention any of the 36 with a corruption case in court. Just one”, he challenged the journalists.

Asked if he’ll sack any minister caught with their hands in the till, he answered in the affirmative.

2. It would take a lot of convincing to have Buhari accede to the devaluation of the country’s currency. He harked back to his time as head of state in the ’80s and said what Nigeria needs to do is get productive and export more instead of trying to make the Naira appreciate against another country’s currency.

He also said he’ll have the CBN Governor address concerns that many Nigerians are unable to withdraw cash from their bank accounts abroad.

3. There’s no credible intelligence regarding the location of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls, the President said. He also re-iterated that his government is ready and willing to dialogue with Boko Haram leadership with some credibility. Buhari said even if the Chibok girls are alive, they are most likely no longer in one place.

The President also said his government will consider banning hijabs if the suicide bombings in the north east with hijab as a cover, continues.

4. The Shiite Islamic sect are certainly in the President’s bad books. “Can we have a state within a state?”, the President asked the panel rhetorically.

He noted that he’s received reports of members of the sect obstructing traffic time and again and constituting themselves into a nuisance from Kaduna to Kano. He also added that the Iranian President rang him on the subject but he let him know Nigeria has got its own laws and system and that the Kaduna State government was handling the issue.

He said he’d rather not comment on the Shiite sect since a panel of inquiry has been set up to investigate the clash with the army. He stopped short of calling the Shiites lawless.

5. Subsidy on petrol probably doesn’t exist, the President said. There was hint that the sector will be liberalized after the 1st quarter of 2016.

Buhari was also nostalgic about the four refineries his government left behind in the ’80s and bemoaned their present comatose state under successive governments.

The President also kept harping on giving the country’s infrastructure a rapid turnaround. “Fashola isn’t a super minister for nothing”, he said

6. Nnamdi Kanu and Sambo Dasuki also got mentioned in this chat. There were a few occasions when Buhari got visibly irritated during the chat but his anger at the duo takes the cake.

“And the one you call Nnamdi Kanu…”, Buhari trailed in palpable disdain, “do you know he has two passports and he didn’t come to Nigeria with any? He has a case of treasonable felony”, said Buhari who added that he hopes the courts do a good job with Kanu and Dasuki.

As for Dasuki, the President wondered why he wanted bail to go treat himself abroad when there are millions of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) without that kind of luxury and who are now orphaned from the insurgency.


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