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.
The President said, “From what I have seen so far, we need very patriotic Nigerians (to be ministers); Nigerians that can work very hard with knowledgeable experience; committed Nigerians to be in charge of ministries.
“A lot of institutions in Nigeria are compromised, everybody for himself and God for all of us. It is most unfortunate. We have people, educated and experienced people, but everybody seems to be working for himself on how much they could get away with as soon as possible.
“We have to look for technocrats and politicians. We have to look out for decent people in this class to give them the responsibility of being in charge of ministries and important parastatals.
“It is taking so much time (to appoint ministers) because a number of knowledgeable people have been compromised. They have been compromised by people who will like to depend on them to damage our economy and security; a lot of them have been compromised.
“The worst thing that I think can happen is to get a compromised person to be in charge of institutions. There is no way he could be efficient or patriotic. Somebody behind the scene will be manipulating him at the expense of the nation.
“This is what we are trying to avoid and I assure you that so much damage has been done to Nigeria. We cannot rush to give this responsibility to people that have unfortunately been compromised.
“This is because there is no way you can effectively supervise, let’s say 20 ministries, you have to give it to people you trust and you allow them to perform according to the Constitution of the country. If you appoint compromised people, then we will be back to square one and Nigeria will be the loser.”
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