Posted on: 11:57 Thu, 31 Dec 2015



President Muhammadu Buhari held
his first Presidential Media Chat on
Wednesday fielding questions about
some of the key issues in the country
from the whereabouts of the Chibok
girls, the Nigerian Army-Shiites clash
and pressure to devalue the naira.

Here are some key comments by the
President:

On the clash between Shi’ites and the
Nigerian Army in Zaria and his silence

i. I have allowed the army and the
Kaduna State government to come
up with their reports before I come
out to speak on the clash. This does
not mean that the police and the DSS
are not doing their part.

ii. The situation in Zaria is very
serious… How can one group create a
state within a state?
On the state of tertiary institutions
I don’t like the idea of University
students sitting on windows to
receive lectures.

On whether he actually promised to
pay unemployed youths N5,000
I cannot come here and deny that.
Foreign exchange restrictions

I. We need power, railways, roads…
These are our priorities; not people
looking for money to bring in rice
(to the country).
II.Foreign exchange will be made
available to the productive sector of
the economy and not for luxury
items.

On calls for the devaluation of the Naira
I need to be convinced about
devaluing the Naira.

On asset declaration

I declared my assets four times… I
don’t have to ask them (Code of
Conduct Bureau) to give you the
asset declaration… You have a
constitutional right to the
documents.

On the continued bomb attacks in parts
of the North-East

I. The Hijab will have to be banned if
this (the suicide bombing) continues.

On the debate about fuel subsidy
By the end of the next quarter, we
will not be talking about subsidy.

How much is the price of
fuel (in the international market)
now?

Reported plans by the National
Assembly to spend billions on cars
I cannot see the National Assembly
spending N45bn to buy cars on top
of the transport allowance they
collect.

On the pace of the anti-corruption war

I. Our major constraint is that
accused person must go to court first
and under such circumstances, we
cannot prejudge what the courts will
do but there are documents and how
the government will react through
the Ministry of Justice will determine
what we will do because what we are
going so we cannot determine issues
while they are still in court.

II. If any member of my cabinet is
corrupt, I will sack the person.

III. Members of the cabinet are
supposed to declare their assets.

On whether funds have been recovered
from looters

I. Money has been recovered but the
fact that whatever we recover will
end up in court because Nigerians
will always want to know the truth
and the truth will be what the courts
have discovered by the submission
made to them in terms of bank
statements where money was
recovered, where money was lodged,
when it was lodged, how it was
lodged whether it was money from
petrol, customs and excise or money
directly from the Central Bank.
When we do that I think Nigerians
will feel a bit better.

II. It is a very nasty situation that we
are in, but we cannot fold our hands
and not do anything; we are doing
our best.

Chibok girls

We are keeping our options open.

We are prepared to negotiate with
boko haram for the girls… There is
no firm intelligence where those girls
physically are and what conditions
they are in but what we learnt from
our intelligence is that they
(terrorists) kept on shifting them
around so that they are not taken by
surprise and they get freed. And a
whole lot of them are not in one
place and we don’t know how many
divisions they have and where they
are . There is no intelligence to say
that the girls are alive and in one
place. That is the honest truth.

On the agitation for Biafra over
alleged marginalisation

We have boko haram and then
Biafra. Help me define the extent of
marginalisation. Who is
marginalising them? Why? How? Do
you know? … The constitution said
there must be a minister from each
state. Who is the Minister of
Petroleum? Is he not Igbo? Who is
the Governor of Central Bank? Is he
not Igbo? Who is the Minister of
Labour? Who is the Minister of
Science and Technology? Who is the
junior minister of education?

On the continued detention of suspected
looters and alleged violation of court
orders by the DSS
You can see the type atrocities that
those people committed against
soldiers and the country. The former
president goes to the governor of the
Central Bank and say, ‘give N40bn to
so, so, so… And then he fails to
account for it and you allow him to
go and see his daughter in London
while and you have two million
people in IDPs, half of them don’t
even know their parents. Which kind
of country do you want to run?

And the one you are calling Kanu. Do
you know he has two passports – one
Nigerian, one British – and he came
to this country without any passport?
… There are criminal allegations
against him and I hope the court will
listen to the case.