National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), John Oyegun, has said that President Muhammadu Buhari, was given a tough task when he was elected in 2015.
Oyegun, however, insisted that Buhari is doing well in dealing with the challenges he met on ground.
According to a statement issued by APC Assistant Publicity Director, Edegbe Odemwingie, on Wednesday, Oyegun made these remarks when he received a delegation of the party from Niger state led by Mohammed Jibril Adamu, state chairman and Abdullahi Shuaibu Maje, chairman of Suleja local government council, in Abuja on Tuesday evening.
Oyegun told the delegation that the National Working Committee (NWC), was working tirelessly to ensure the unity of the APC, which is a merger of several parties.
“The leadership of the party, in this case the national working committee (NWC) has tried to the best of its ability to do the difficult process of welding together the party that was created out of three, four other parties. It has not been easy as you very well know. But we thank God that by and large; it has been a significant success,” he said.
“It is a very difficult task that we have all thrust on the president. We had to deal with a predecessor regime whose hallmark was corruption. A regime that had lost all vision; that had lost all interest in developing our nation given the kind of resources that were available. A regime that instead of developing, wasted our national resources such that as at the time we were taking over, there really was nothing. The economy had already collapsed. Salaries were not being paid. Public infrastructure had collapsed. Price of oil had also collapsed.
“So, the president had a very difficult situation to handle. It is not surprising then the kind of pain that a lot of our brothers and sisters are going through today. One will depend on people like you to help us pass the message to our people that this is just a passing phase; this is an evil that was created by predecessor regimes. The president and his team are working flat out to make sure that our economy is diversified and our nation no longer depends on oil only. I pray that God restore the president to complete health so that he can continue the mission.
“There is no magic to it. It is taking time, but this country will never go back to the bad old days where all we did was divide the money from oil. Today, I am very proud of the accomplishment of states like Kebbi, Jigawa, Zamfara and the rest of them in agriculture. Today, Nigerian rice is becoming what we all eat. Tomorrow by God’s grace, we will be able to export Nigerian rice to the rest of Africa and far beyond.”
