Buhari regrets coming to power now

In a near rueful tone, President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday told a London audience he wouldn’t understand why he bid for and got power in this trying time in Nigeria’s history.

“Why didn’t I come when the treasury was full? Oil price was over $140 per barrel and when I came, it slipped down to $30. Why me? He lamented in a string of rhetorical questions.

“Why is it that it is when they have spent all the money, when they made the country insecure that I returned?”

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Buhari, who began his 125 hours’ vacation leave, told the gathering how much he now prays for God’s intervention in the affairs of the world’s sixth largest oil producer reeling in the throes of oil slump.

“I keep on praying to God to pity Nigeria and its over 170 million people who are exposed to climate change, illiteracy and poverty,” he said.

But he believes there’s still reason to hold on.

Citing how his government has made some success with the Treasury Single Account to shore up the nation’s dwindling savings, Buhari said N2.2 trillion has been raked in from over 4000 account ministries, departments, and agencies had been operating before he came.

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“By the end of December, coming to January 2016, we mopped up more than N2.2trn which would have been used through bureaucratic system to raise vouchers and sign cheques so that they don’t go into the next budget,” he said.

Buhari is the second of the two military ex-rulers that have come to govern Nigeria as civilian presidents. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, an ex-general, came to power at outset of the current democratic dispensation.

Buhari’s first coming in 1983 was somehow ill-timed, too. The civilian government of former President Shehu Shagari had made a mess of the country then through corruption, debt, and indiscipline.