We Were Saying Rubbish During Election Campaign and that Made Things Difficult for Us – President Buhari

President Buhari who described his first year in office as “a tumultuous year for everyone in the villa”, said that things were difficult because they said rubbish during the campaign.

“Whatever we did in the campaign, In fact, we were saying rubbish and that made it very difficult for us” He said.

Apparently, Buhari was actually referring to the campaign promises they made while preparing for the election last year.

“We had to do it on our own we found out that government could not continue with 42 ministers and the paraphernalia of office. So, we cut it down to 24. We had to cut down half the number of permanent secretaries and then do some cross postings. The permanent secretaries that were there for the past five to seven years the only thing that they know is how things were done in the previous years”, he said.
“Whatever we did in the campaign, In fact, we were saying rubbish and that made it very difficult for us. Things were even more difficult during the budget which you all know about.
“For somebody like me, for the first time I heard what is called “padding”. I think we will recover by the fourth quarter of the year. What padding means especially for ministers who had implemented what padding contains. There were very serious development which I never knew about.
“So, really it was a nasty experience for us. It was also a nasty experience for some of the ministers who were never in government. For them to sit down day and night to work. I saw them. Some of them literary lost weight because they were sleeping less and eating less. Working on every kobo to be spent.
“Because we became a mono-economy of oil rich Nigeria, everybody relied on oil and forgot about solid minerals, agriculture, making and exploring things. We recently just found out that we are poor because we don’t have anything to fall back to. This is the condition we found ourselves and this change mantra had to go through hell up till yesterday”.