President Muhammadu Buhari says some persons who stole money from Nigeria’s coffers have started returning the funds voluntarily.
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While answering a question from a Nigerian, Buhari said trial of treasury looters would have commenced but for his administration’s determination to conduct a thorough investigation and gather more evidence needed to prosecute the cases.
“When we get those documents then we will formally charge them to court and then we will tell Nigerians to know those, who abused trust when they were entrusted with public funds or when they took it by force for 16 years”. And you know well that if you spare the rod, you will spoil the child.
He said Buhari also stated that the sabotage and theft of gas were undermining the efforts of his government towards increasing power supply in Nigeria.
He, therefore, pledged to deal with such saboteurs to restore sanity in the power sector and improve service delivery to Nigerians. “And so, we love MTN because MTN is part and parcel of the Nigerian dream”, he said.
Your old friends NEPA or Power Holding Company of Nigeria have been sold to a number of interest groups.
“Those who normally steal Nigerian crude and those who blow up installations, whether they called themselves militants or whatever, they are still there”, he said.
He assured that the Military Task-Force with representation from the Army, Navy, Air Force, the Police and other security agencies would be reconstituted to secure the pipelines.
These were disclosed by the President during a communicating session he had with members of the Nigerian community living in Iran.
Buhari said: “Although some improvement in power had been recorded in the recent period, sabotage of pipeline installations continues to be a problem”.
The president, while pointing out that Nigeria, had in the past focused on developing crude oil but was facing global decline in revenues from the resource, however, expressed the hope that the nation’s proven gas reserve base now put at 188 trillion cubic feet could actually be in excess of 600 trillion when developed. More importantly, I am a subscriber of MTN from day one that MTN came to Nigeria and I don’t want to be dispossessed of it.
Speaking on job creation, the president blamed the last administration for the high rate of unemployment in the country, saying it was due to the devastating blow to the economy through corruption and incompetence.
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He explained that few Nigerians now in prison in Iran were drug couriers, who attempted to smuggle banned substances into the country from Afghanistan.
