President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday said he would not make compromised citizens and ‘hostages’ ministers.
“We will try as much as possible to avoid appointing hostages; by this, I mean people who have been in the system but compromised their personal and professional integrity, Buhari said on Monday in a live programme, Good Morning Nigeria, on the Nigerian Television Authority.He said he needed decent, patriotic and hard-working technocrats as well as politicians to work with him in order to achieve his dream of repositioning the country. He said the worst thing that could happen to his administration was to get compromised persons to be in charge of institutions, adding that such people would be ineffective and unpatriotic.
Buhari said that the All Progressives Congress’ members in the National Assembly, by their conduct and the ongoing leadership crisis in the legislature, were allowing the Peoples Democratic Party to take over his government.
He said, “I have to be very sensitive to the Constitution of the country. I do not like to be told by anybody, especially the legislators that I am interfering in their matter. There are three arms of government: executive, legislature and the judiciary. “The only thing I can do is to appeal to the conscience of the APC members in the Senate and House. It took us time to get to where we are; I don’t want personal ambitions to scuttle our success and therefore fail to deliver on our promises to the nation.”