By Muslim Muhammad Yusuf, Abuja
Ex-Minister of Sports and Youth Development, Solomon Dalung, has claimed that former President Muhammadu Buhari is living in regret after his allies “dragged his name in the mud.”
Dalung, who served under Buhari’s government, also said the Buhari administration failed to fulfil the promises made to Nigeria during the 2015 campaign.
In an interview with Trust Radio, owned by Media Trust Group, the former Minister said as a founding member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), he has responsibility to speak the truth.
“We failed to meet our expectations, and I am not hypocritical because as a major stakeholder who campaigned vigorously in 2015 and went to the nooks and crannies of the north, of all the promises we made, we fulfilled none of them,” he said.
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“The political covenant we had with Nigerians while campaigning was that we were going to address the security situation; we were going to revamp the economy; and we were going to give corruption a major technical blow so that we could minimize it to the barest minimum.”
“Looking back, reflecting and evaluating the situation as it is today, we failed woefully.”
He described Buhari as a very honest leader, who believed in people around him, but got his name was dragged in the mud by them.
“He (Buhari) is a very honest man who believed that everybody around him was an honest person, he brought them and trusted them. Today, I believe he is living in regret.
“They have dragged his name and integrity not only into the mud and they’ve reduced his image,” Dalung said.
The former Minister believed that the APC’s administration between 2015 and 2019 recorded a modest progress, because “insecurity was not as worse as it is currently.”
He said, “Banditry and terrorism got minimized in terms of attacks, but it’s still flourishing, the complete change of dynamics in the security situation worse than ever before in the history of this country, and is a remarkable failure and indictment too on the APC, because these were not part the democratic covenant they had with Nigerians”.
