Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, in far-away Poland, vowed never to complain about what he termed as the 16 years of holocaust that the main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, reportedly visited on Nigeria.
Buhari made the declaration during an interactive session with the Nigerian community on the side-line of the ongoing global summit on Climate Change holding in Katowice, Poland.
He said he had resolved to stop complaining about the problems his administration inherited when it came into office some three-and-a-half years ago, declaring: “I asked for it,” an apparent reference to the staggering three times he relentlessly vied for office before he became fourth time lucky in 2015.
“We inherited so many problems,” the president said. “Actually, I have said I will not complain because I asked for it. I tried to become President three times and I lost. But I was lucky the fourth time, I became one. So, I can’t complain.
“Who asked me to do it again? Three times I ended up in the Supreme Court. The third time, I said, ‘God dey’ and the fourth time, God and technology, using the permanent voter card and the card readers, they couldn’t rig the elections; so I won.”
Buhari also told the inquisitive Nigerians at the parley that significant progress had been made in the war against insurgency but stressed that Boko Haram insurgents were able to launch surprise attacks in recent months because they knew the area better than the troops.
“Those in the north-east will tell you that before we came, the so-called Boko Haram used to hold about 17 local governments,” he reiterated. “Now, physically, they are not holding any local government. So, they have resorted to real guerilla tactics of hit and run.
“They mobilise, hit targets, and then disappear again because they know the area more than the soldiers that are defending them. Our soldiers are from Port Harcourt, Lagos, Sokoto, but they (the insurgents) are locally there and know the terrain more than the soldiers.”
Despite that, the president enthused that the war against terror was winnable and his administration would defeat the terrorists, though he lamented that “it is not easy financing the war against terror”.
