As he leaves Aso Rock Villa to his successor today (Monday) after eight years in office, President Muhammadu Buhari says he is leaving Nigeria better than he met it in 2015.
In a dawn farewell broadcast to Nigerians on Sunday, the President emphatically declared: “I am confident that I am leaving office with Nigeria better in 2023 than in 2015.”
He said that he had fulfilled most of the electoral promises he made to Nigerians before he was elected as President in 2015.
The broadcast speech reads:
My fellow Nigerian brothers, sisters and friends of Nigeria.
I address you today, in my last assignment as a democratically elected President of our great and well-endowed nation, with a deep sense of gratitude to God, a great deal of appreciation to the Nigerian people and a modest sense of fulfilment.
Today we mark and celebrate another peaceful transition of power from one elected government to another in our steady march to improve and sustain Nigeria’s democracy.
This year we witnessed the most keenly contested Presidential Elections since the first Republic and this demonstrates that our democracy is getting better and more entrenched with each election.
We must as a nation improve and sustain gains we make in the electoral process, on an incremental basis for Nigeria to take its rightful place among Nations.
Our democracy provides for, allows and encourages seeking redress for perceived injustices, enabling some candidates and political parties that did not agree with the results to go to court.
Irrespective of the outcome of the various cases, I urge all parties involved to accept the decision of our courts and join hands to build a better Nigeria.
I salute the doggedness and resilience of all the Presidential Candidates and their political parties for believing in our judicial system by taking their grievances with the election results to court.
In the course of the campaigns, we had argued and disagreed on how to make Nigeria better but we never disagreed or had any doubts that Nigeria has to be better.
