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.
“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.”
President Buhari who claimed that his administration has recorded growth in Agriculture, virtually stopped importing Rice, exporting grains and no longer depend on oil, added that he will take action on the extension of the tenure of the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, whose last day in office is meant to be January 15.
Here is the 90 minutes interview video: