President Muhammadu Buhari has urged all Nigerians to enter the New Year with new hope and see it as a period to move forward as a nation towards unity, progress and prosperity.
The president in his New Year message released yesterday said the year 2023 would be a time his administration would use to work to solidify on delivering key strategic priorities under its Security, Economy and Anti-Corruption (SEA) agenda.
Buhari, who welcomed both praises and knocks from Nigerians, said he did his best to people while praying that the next president would continue the race to make Nigeria one of the leading countries of the world by the end of the century.
He said Nigerians must also take responsibility to ensure they participated in ensuring that the 2023 elections were free and fair by not engaging in anti-state activities and other nefarious acts that might affect the polls.
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He further charged them to resist every attempt to be used by politicians to create unrest in any form to disrupt the elections, pledging that, “We as government will ensure such activities are met with the full force of the law.
“This year (2023) is particularly important to me because this message is in essence valedictory. After having the honour of serving you, my compatriots, for the last seven plus years, my tenure as your president in the most revered tradition of our ongoing and maturing democracy must necessarily come to an end.
“In the next five months we would have gone to the polls and elected a new president along with new governors and a plethora of other elected officials at both the national and state levels.
“All these electoral and democratic principles are working in concert because of the transcendent belief, beyond partisan politics, of you, the great citizens of Nigeria. In addition is my personal commitment and executive promise to see to the letter that the 2023 elections being diligently conducted by INEC will be free and fair. The collective electoral will and votes of Nigerians will be fulfilled even in the twilight moments of my watch.”
On security, Buhari said, “We will continue to engage, push back and dismantle the operations of both internal and external extremist and criminal groups waging war against our communities across the nation. We will also focus on ensuring that free and fair elections would be held come February, 2023.
“Our security forces are working in partnership to ensure the wins we have got in the war against insurgency, banditry, secession and other crimes are sustained and more wins acquired.”
He further said that over 82,000 insurgents with their families had surrendered to the military, adding that a number of surrendered insurgents were currently being processed by a rehabilitation programme, code named Operation Safe Corridor.
He also said the fight against banditry, kidnapping and other crimes in the North West and other regions was gaining momentum and showing very clear results, citing the resumption of train services on the Kaduna to Abuja corridor.
On the anti-corruption drive of the administration, he said the federal government had created new records in the fight, growing from 117 convictions in 2017 to 3,615 as at December, 2022, adding that, “We as a government are committed to ridding our nation of all forms of corruption through the collaboration with all the arms of government to effectively prosecute this fight.”
