President Muhammadu Buhari has said that his predecessor, Dr Goodluck Jonathan will continue to have his respect based on the manner he accept defeat in the last Presidential poll.
The President told members of the State House Press Corps on Monday that Jonathan’s call came as a shock to him after losing such a keenly contested poll.
Basking in the euphoria of his first year anniversary in office, Buhari said it was quite generous and patriotic of Jonathan to accept defeat having been in government for about 16 years as deputy governor, governor, vice president and president.
“This is where I pay my respect to former President Goodluck Jonathan. This is actually a privileged information for you. He called me at a quarter past five in the evening.
“He said good evening your Excellency sir and I said good evening. He said, I have called to congratulate you that I have conceded defeat .
“Of course there was dead silence at my end because I did not expect it. I was shocked. I did not expect it because after 16 years the man was a Deputy Governor, Governor, Vice President and was President for six years.
“For him to have conceded defeat even before the result was announced by INEC, I think it was quite generous and patriotic of him”, the President said.
He explained that former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar recognised the generosity of Jonathan to concede defeat and suggested that they needed to visit Jonathan to thank him.
However, Buhari said that his administration underrated the negative impact of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for 16 years watching from outside.
“The Permanent Secretaries that were there for the past five to seven years the only thing that they know is how things were done in the previous years.
“Whatever we did in the campaign, infact we were saying rubbish and that made it very difficult for us. Things were even more difficult during the budget which you all know about. For somebody like me, for the first time I heard what is called padding”, he said.
The President stated that the padding issue was a nasty experience for him and his ministers, adding that by the fourth quarter of this year, his government would be able to understand what padding means particularly for ministers who had to implement what padding contained
“So really it was a nasty experience for us. It was also a nasty experience for some of the ministers who were never in government, for them to sit down day and night to work.
“I saw them some of them literally lost weight because they were sleeping less and eating less. Working on every kobo to be spent because we became a mono-economy of oil rich Nigeria
“Everybody relied on oil and forgot about solid minerals, agriculture, making and exploring things, we recently just found out that we are poor because we don’t have anything to fall back on. This is the condition we found ourselves and this change mantra had to go through hell up till yesterday”, he said
While referring to the $2.1 billion arms deal involving former National Security Adviser (NSA) Colonel Sambo Dasuki (rtd), Buhari said during the past administration, people who were supposed to be trusted just shared money into their accounts.
“People were trusted and the most recent one which we haven’t recovered from is the $2.1billion dollars which was given by the government then, to the military to buy hardware to fight the insurgency which had taken over part of the country and they just sat just the way you are sitting now and shared the money into their own account.
“They didn’t even bother. So we are still trying to get the cooperation of the international community and so on and we have to do it with a lot of respect to the judiciary”, he said
