President Muhammadu Buhari has said that he would continue to blame past administrations for current economic challenges currently facing the country.
Buhari spoke on Thursday night at an event for the youths with the theme”The Conversation: An evening with creative youths”
The President noted that those that were in power before he assumed office took things for granted.
According to him, passing the buck and blaming past administrations in power was important so that Nigerians can know what and how things went wrong despite the fact that God has endowed Nigeria with human and material resources.
The President urged the youths to be alive to their responsibilities by holding their leaders and elites accountable for their actions, stressing that the future belongs to them.
He said, “I’m going to bore you with what we met, I know I’m being accused in the papers of passing the buck. But passing the buck is sometimes absolutely necessary to remind people who take things for granted.
“When we came in by some unfortunate coincidence, I scream to high heavens because I had promised a lot while seeking vote. I said where are the savings? There was none. There was no infrastructure, power, rails, roads, there was none. What did we spend the money on? I was told buying food and petrol.
“Where were the billions going? We conducted a study and found out that the oil marketers were committing fraud on at least one third of what they were importing, which is about 25 per cent of our foreign exchange”
Buhari further said, “the youths must watch our elites. The condition we found ourselves, it is unpatriotic for anybody to pretend that economically we have not had a problem.
“We have gone into the farms, I congratulate some of the governors and by the grace of God by the end of this government we will be exporting rice and grains. So all the money alleged to have been used to import will be available to sustain development.
“I have bored you with this long explanation because there are things that could be hidden from you by those that had mismanaged the country in the last 16, 17 years”, he added.