President Mohammadu Buhari has described as misconstrued, the various
interpretations his interview he granted to the UK’s Telegraph newspaper
on February 5, 2016.
In a statement released in Abuja and signed by Malam Garba Shehu (Senior
Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity), the President
noted that the wave of negative reactions to his remarks about the
reputation of Nigerians abroad was as a result of an incomplete
understanding of his point.
“President Buhari was asked about the flood of migrants from Nigeria and
the fraudulent applications for asylum put in by people desperate to leave
their motherland at any cost, and it was this question that elicited his
response,” he said, encouraging Nigerians to avail themselves of a full
text of the interview, which has now been made available on the
Telegraph’s website.
Malam Shehu added that it was preposterous for anyone to imagine that the
President of Nigeria would describe all the citizens of the country he
leads as criminals, when he himself is a Nigerian–obviously not a
criminal–and when there are many Nigerians of honest living making their
country proud all over the world.
“Unfortunately, there are also Nigerians giving their country a bad image
abroad, and it is to those Nigerians that the President referred in his
comments,” he said, adding that people may play politics and online games
with the President’s comments, but the fact of the matter remains that
Nigeria’s reputation abroad has been severely damaged by her own citizens.
“These Nigerians who leave their country to go and make mischief on
foreign shores have given the rest of us a bad reputation that we daily
struggle to overcome.”
Malam Shehu called attention to the many efforts of President Buhari to
clean up the image of Nigeria, such as the war on corruption, stating that
acknowledging you have a problem is the first step to preferring a
solution.
“President Buhari is very aware of the problems the people of Nigeria face
both at home and abroad, and he is not shying away from admitting them
even as he focuses on solutions to bring them to a permanent end.”
Garba Shehu
SSAP(Media and Publicity)
Abuja.
09-02-16.