Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, has urged Nigerians to give him a second chance to do better and make a difference while addressing Nigerians living in the United States of America on Friday.
Buhari promised to make a remarkable difference if he is re-elected in the forthcoming general election.
In the build up to the 2015 election, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Buhari had promised voters that the nation’s troubled economy would be lifted, win the war against Boko Haram and end perennial corruption in the land.
But, the drumbeat changed for the President who declared his intention to contest for a second term in the 2019 presidential election earlier in the year.
President Buhari has, however, promised to make things better if given a second opportunity.
“I will leave some difference in that office,” the President said.
Buhari noted that one of the major issues facing Nigeria is the elites who are looting the country’s treasury and he recalled how he locked some of them up during his service as the head of state.
“In 1983, military officers gathered, and made me Head of State. I packed the politicians into jail, told them they were guilty until they could prove their innocence,” Buhari said.
“We seized what they had looted, but after I myself was put in detention, the politicians were given back what they had looted. How many elite complained about that?” he added.
The President stated that when he was chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), he constructed roads from Lagos to Abuja, to Onitsha, to Port Harcourt. Since then, the roads were not done, between 1999 and 2015, “yet the elite did not say a word,”
“I was called Baba Go Slow. Those who were going fast, where did they get to?” he added.
He, therefore, stated that his loyalty is with the ordinary people of Nigeria who had always supported him during the time he contested and didn’t win and not with the elite who always sing foul of him.
“Three times I contested elections; three times I went to court after the elections were rigged against me. No justice, but I said ‘God dey.’
“It was mainly the ordinary people that stood by me. That is why I am always conscious of them. They are my constituency. Even pregnant women on the queue would fall into labour, go to have their babies, and still come back to vote for me. I will keep doing my best for the country.”
He also urged Nigerians in the diaspora to return home and invest in the country.
