After Nigeria marked its
Democracy Day the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and
Publicity, Garba Shehu, said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily that
Buhari would keep to his
promise.
The Presidency says
President Muhammadu Buhari has not rescinded his decision to publish the
amounts that have been recovered by his administration from those who had
allegedly looted the nation’s treasury.
The conversation,
‘Assessing Buhari’s One Year In Office’ saw the President’s spokesman
addressing several controversies generated by the President’s national
broadcast on Sunday.
The President’s Democracy
Day speech had been widely criticised because it failed to address the promise
to publish the amounts of funds that have been recovered and from whom they
were recovered since the anti-corruption campaign started.
The President had promised
that the information would made public when his administration clocks one year
but Mr Shehu said that “the President did not at any time say he was going to
name names”.
Mr Shehu expressed surprise
that the issue had generated so much negative reactions from Nigerians,
explaining that the President did not cancel his decision to announce the
seizures that have been made.
“What he (President) said
was that the Minister of Information will be making a pronouncement on this and
this is going to happen when work resumes from Tuesday.
“This is likely going to be
out by Wednesday, or latest by Thursday. So nothing has changed from the
position that there will be disclosure.
“The President has given
authorisation that these assets that have been taken back from those who took
from the treasury be put out there. So my view is that nothing is lost.”
Mr Shehu said that the
directive by President is that “money on account” in the CBN should be
disclosed. He explained that there were also many accounts that have been
frozen by investigating agencies.
He named the Police, EFCC,
ICPC and the Office of the National Security Adviser among those handling the
matter, so the Presidency expects “that there will be a snapshot of where they
stand with the ongoing investigation and the recoveries when that disclosure is
made”.
One Year Lost
Mr Shehu disagreed with the
view by some Nigerians that the Buhari administration had lost one year, as it
has failed to achieve some of what it promised to achieve in the first year.
“The President had focus,
he knew what to do from the beginning. He identified the problems of this
country, putting the security of the country on top of the heap.
“He said repeatedly, ‘this
country must be secured, there must be peace in this country for you to develop
and manage it very well’.
“And I think that he has
done for this country what others had failed to do for four to five years in
which they had allowed problems like Boko Haram to fester.
“A street protest in
Maiduguri had grown into a city-wide phenomenon, problem for neighbouring
states and all of the Lake Chad, in fact a global phenomenon with the linkage
to ISIS.
“President Buhari within
one year is about to bring Boko Haram to a closure. This is massive,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment