A pre-recorded interview of President Buhari that was conducted recently by Arise TV, has been released on You Tube. Presenting the intro to the interview which was tagged:
’90 Minutes with President Buhari’, Charles Aniagolu, the presenter, stated that President Buhari declined to feature live on television, and chose a recorded session instead.
Speaking on the interview conducted with the president, Aniagolu said
“Straightaway, Mr Buhari declined to be interviewed live on camera by Arise News, preferring instead to hold a recorded session only with ThisDay newspaper. And so, the Board of Editors from ThisDay spent over an hour questioning the president about the substance of his major policy signature issues such as lapses in security, the fight against corruption, the economy, poverty alleviation and the infrastructure deficit”.
In the course of the interview, President Buhari was asked why he had not removed the service chiefs despite the increasing spate of attacks by Boko Haram members.In his response, President Buhari said he followed due process in appointing the service chiefs but did not know they would perform poorly. He said he accepts responsibility for their poor performance. He said when dealing with issues of security emergencies, one has to be careful with tampering with the head of service.
“While fighting insecurity, if you remove service chiefs and the Inspector-General of Police, if you don’t wait for an appropriate time to do it, then you create competition within the service.
There are so many ambitious people waiting within the service but only one man can be chief of army staff, only one man can be chief of air staff in the air force, only one man can be IG. Don’t forget that it was this administration that appointed them. I didn’t know them personally.
I followed records and I thought I picked the best then. Of course, their performance may be disappointing but I accept responsibility for not changing them.”
Responding to allegations that he might want to extend the tenure of Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, whose last day in office is meant to be January 15th, President Buhari said
”I will take action”.
President Buhari in the course of the interview, pointed out the growtrh his administration has recorded in Agriculture. He said that Nigeria has virtually stopped importing Rice and has started exporting grains. He said Nigeria is no longer depended on oil.