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'I promised Nigerians too much while seeking for votes,' President says

President Buhari accused previous administrations of spending Nigeria's revenue on importation of food and petrol.

During his UN address, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said that devastation created by Boko Haram had been compounded with climate change

Speaking at the launch of a pictorial book titled: by his personal photographer, Bayo Omoboriowo, at the Presidential Villa on Thursday, September 29, 2016, the president said previous administrations spent Nigeria's revenue on petrol and food.

“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," President Buhari said.

“When we came in by some unfortunate coincidence, I scream to high heavens because I had promised a lot while seeking votes. 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.

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“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 percent of our foreign exchange.

“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,”  the president added.

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President Buhari has however written to the Senate to seek emergency power to roll out an economic recovery package that would help Nigeria out of the present recession.

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