Previous govt breached the trust of Nigerians, says Buhari

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has raised the debate on the controversial arms deal when he declared that some officials in the last administration abused the trust Nigerians reposed in them.

The President, who made the observation during a dinner he held for members of the House of Representatives at the State House Abuja yesterday, however sought the understating and support of lawmakers towards addressing the myriads of problems confronting the nation.

Speaking extempore, the President said:”I decided to host this dinner to thank you very much for your support so far. But we still have a long way to go. Our objective is that we first have to  secure the country and efficiently manage it because we are all in government.
“In fact, we are the government, you, the executive and the judiciary so nobody should contemplate alienating the other

We have already set our priorities right during our campaigns to secure the country then efficiently manage it.”
The President declared:”Securing the country is obviously dealing decisively with Boko haram. When we came in, the military leadership had to be removed and reconstituted, a new set put in with clear target to reorganize, retrain, reequip and make sure that Boko haram is uprooted and neutralized.”

But unfortunately for us as a people, we uncovered that billions of naira and hundreds of millions of dollars were expended by the previous government to acquire good equipment and ammunition so that the military can use, but unfortunately, there was abuse of trust at various levels which cost Nigeria a lot of lives and goodwill.

So, on this we cannot keep quiet about and it is coming out gradually. It is very unfortunate. It is a known fact that Nigeria earned its respect from Burma to Zaire to Liberia to Sierra Leone. But it reached a stage where the Nigerian military could not secure 14 local councils out of 774.”