Mr. Femi Adesina
The Presidency on Friday said the reported discussion between President Muhammadu Buhari and the World Bank Group President, Jim Yong Kim, was deliberately twisted by those who it said specialise in such acts.
Media reports had it that Kim disclosed in Washington DC, United States of America, that Buhari had requested a concentration of the bank’s intervention efforts in the northern part of Nigeria.
The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, in a statement said “ignorant and mischievous people” are making it seem that Buhari’s position was a calculated attempt to give the North an unfair advantage over other parts of Nigeria.
Adesina said the President, since his inauguration, had been seeking international support for the rebuilding of the North-East, which was ravaged by years of insurgency.
He said what Buhari did in calling attention to the plight of the people of the region was what a leader should do.
The presidential spokesman said, “The truth of the matter is that President Buhari, right from his first week in office in June, 2015, had reached out to the G-7 in Germany that Nigeria needed help to rebuild the North-East, which had been terribly devastated by insurgency .
“He said the country would prefer help in terms of rebuilding of infrastructure, rather than cash donations, which may end up being misappropriated. In concert with the governors of the region, a comprehensive list of needed repairs was sent to the G-7 leaders.
“Also, during a trip to Washington in 2015, and many other engagements that followed, President Buhari sought the help of the World Bank in rebuilding the beleaguered North-East, which was then being wrested from the stranglehold of a pernicious insurgency.
“It was something always done in the open, and which reflected the President’s concern for the region.
“Those ululating over the disclosure by the President of the World Bank should be a bit reflective, and consider the ravages that the North-East has suffered since 2009, when the Boko Haram insurgency started.
“Schools, hospitals, homes, entire villages, towns, cities, bridges, and other public utilities have been blown up, laid waste, and lives terminated in excess of 20,000, while widows and orphans littered the landscape. The humanitarian crisis was in monumental proportion.
“President Buhari simply did what a caring leader should do. He took the battle to the insurgents, broke their backs, and then sought for help to rebuild, so that the people could have their lives back.
“Should that then elicit the negative commentary that has trailed the disclosure from the World Bank? Not at all, except from insidious minds.”
Adesina maintained that Buhari has a pan-Nigerian mandate, and that he would discharge his duties and responsibilities in like manner.
He said any part of the country that required special attention would receive it, irrespective of primordial affinities, which he said narrow-minded people have not been able to live above.
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