Spotting white Babanriga and white hat to match, President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday morning resumed duties for the first time in his office inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Since their inauguration on May 29, Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo have used the Defence House, Abuja, as their offices to allow renovation work at the Presidential Villa.
Osinbajo arrived the Vice President’s wing of the Aso Rock Villa at exactly 9.07am.
The vice president after spending few minutes in his office later trekked to Buhari’s office.
At Buhari’s office, the two leaders met with some of the top presidential aides.
Among those the President met with on his first day at the Villa include Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, Ismaila Aliyu, who led security chiefs to brief Buhari on security situation in the country.
He also met with the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and later the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefuele.
After the meetings, Buhari paid courtesy call on journalists covering the State House at about 5.30pm.
He spent a total of 25 minutes with the State House correspondents,shook hands and had photograph with each of the journalists in the hall.
In a related development, President Muhammadu Buhari Monday said that he inherited a “virtually empty treasury” with debts running into hundreds of millions of Dollars and appealed to the media to explain the true position to Nigerians so that “they won’t match on us”.
The President who spoke while meeting with members of the State House Press Corps said it was a disgrace that Nigeria is not able to pay workers salaries adding that this was as a result of bad management.
According to him, there was already a lot of pressure on his government due to the huge expectations of Nigerians on what they desire from the administration.
While calling on the media to cooperate with his administration, President Buhari said he choose Femi Adesina to be his Adviser because he is ‘one of the best’.
President Muhammadu Buhari attending to some files in his office as he resumed duties at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Photo by Abayomi Adeshida
“It is not by accident that I got the best of you to be the special adviser, one of the 15 aides I had to get clearance from the Senate. He is one of the best President of the guild that I can have as special advisers. I brought one of the best of you so that he can consistently defend me against you.
“Whether my job is a difficult one or easy it is up to him, but I’m here to thank you in advance for what good and ill you are going to do to me.
“I have to quickly come and see you and welcome you to this place. I hope what happened of recent between the former president and one of you (the seizure of the accreditation of the Radio Germany reporter) will not happen between me and you.
“I hope we are starting and this culture developed, of 100 days is bringing so much pressure with treasury virtually empty, with debts in millions of dollars, with state workers and even federal workers not paid their salaries. It is such a disgrace for Nigeria. I think Nigeria should be in a position to even pay it’s workers. This bad management that we find ourselves in, we really need your help to protect us from people before they match on us” he said.
For members of the State House Press Corps, it is a first time that they would be meeting the president, starting from President Obasanjo up to President Goodluck Jonathan.
Chairman of the State House Press Corps, Kehinde Amodu who spoke on behalf of members of the Corp pledge to work with the government in the interest of Nigeria.
No comments:
Post a Comment