PRESIDENCY CLARIFIES BUHARI’S STATEMENT TO WORLD BANK PRESIDENT ON FAVOURING ‘NORTHERN REGIONS OF NIGERIA’
PRESIDENCY CLARIFIES
BUHARI’S STATEMENT TO WORLD BANK PRESIDENT ON FAVOURING ‘NORTHERN REGIONS OF
NIGERIA’
President Muhammadu Buhari talking
The presidency has clarified the
statement by the World Bank President, Jim Kim, that President Muhammadu Buhari
asked the bank to focus its development efforts on “northern regions of
Nigeria.”
“In my very first meeting with
President Buhari he said specifically that he would like us to shift our focus
to the northern regions of Nigeria and we’ve done that,” said Mr. Kim, who has
led the World Bank since 2012.
Mr. Kim’s statement on Thursday has
elicited a lot of criticisms of the president with some Nigerians accusing of
favouring the northern part of the country, where he is from, ahead of the
remaining.
The presidency, in a statement by Mr.
Buhari’s spokesperson, Femi Adesina, however, explained that what the president
meant was the North-east region that has been devastated by the Boko Haram
insurgency.
“The truth of the matter is that
President Buhari, right from his first week in office in June, 2015, had
reached out to the G-7 in Germany that Nigeria needed help to rebuild the
North-east, which had been terribly devastated by insurgency,” Mr. Adesina
said.
The Boko Haram insurgency has caused
about 100,000 deaths and millions of people displaced since 2009, according to
official estimates.
Read Mr. Adesina’s full statement
below.
Those who specialize in a deliberate
twisting of information have wailed and raged endlessly on the news item
credited to the World Bank Group President, Jim Yong Kim, who disclosed in
Washington DC, United States of America, that President Muhammadu Buhari had
requested a concentration of the Bank’s intervention efforts in the northern
part of Nigeria, particularly in the North-east.
The ignorant and mischievous people,
who twist everything for their vile purposes, are making it seem that it was a
calculated attempt to give the North an unfair advantage over other parts of
Nigeria.
The truth of the matter is that
President Buhari, right from his first week in office in June, 2015, had
reached out to the G-7 in Germany that Nigeria needed help to rebuild the
North-east, which had been terribly devastated by insurgency. He said the country
would prefer help in terms of rebuilding of infrastructure, rather than cash
donation, which may end up being misappropriated. In concert with Governors of
the region, a comprehensive list of needed repairs was sent to the G-7 leaders.
Also, during a trip to Washington in
2015, and many other engagements that followed, President Buhari sought the
help of the World Bank in rebuilding the beleaguered North-east, which was then
being wrested from the stranglehold of a pernicious insurgency. It was something
always done in the open, and which reflected the President’s concern for the
region.
Those ululating over the disclosure
by the President of the World Bank should be a bit reflective, and consider the
ravages that the North-east has suffered since 2009, when the Boko Haram
insurgency started.
Schools, hospitals, homes, entire
villages, towns, cities, bridges, and other public utilities have been blown
up, laid waste, and lives terminated in excess of 20,000, while widows and
orphans littered the landscape. The humanitarian crisis was in monumental
proportions.
President Buhari simply did what a
caring leader should do. He took the battle to the insurgents, broke their
backs, and then sought for help to rebuild, so that the people could have their
lives back. Should that then elicit the negative commentary that has trailed
the disclosure from the World Bank? Not at all, except from insidious minds.
President Buhari has a pan-Nigerian
mandate, and he will discharge his duties and responsibilities in like manner.
Any part of the country that requires special attention would receive it,
irrespective of primordial affinities, which narrow minded people have not been
able to live above. This President will always work in the best interest of all
parts of the country at all times. Let ethnic warriors sheathe their swords.
