TheCable

Femi Adesina, special adviser to the president on media and publicity, says President Muhammadu Buhari only promised change but Nigerians want magic.

In an interview with Radio Continental, Adesina appealed to Nigerians to support the current administration, quoting Buhari as saying it would take a minimum of 18 months to revive the economy.

“I think Nigerians have always complained, and we should learn to stop complaining and believe more,” he said.

“If you have elected a government because you believe it can bring change, and you have not allowed them to isolate what the problems are, and articulate what the solutions would be, and you begin to have all these complaints, I think it is not natural.

“What government needs at a time like this, is cooperation and support. The president said this at an interview last week. He said things deteriorated over 16 years that PDP was in power, this is the ninth month of this government, and you want everything to have changed. It is not real.

“There must be realistic expectation, and realistic expectation will demand that people are patient, supportive, and encourage the government. This is a government that is working for the people. Rather than complaining, let us cooperate, support and encourage.

“The promised change would come. Don’t forget that our president said it would take a minimum of 18 months to revive the economy. Nigerians don’t listen to something like that, they want magic immediately. It doesn’t happen that way. This change will come, but it would follow a process, and it would be enduring.”

Adesina blamed the epileptic power supply to frequent attacks on installations, saying government is doing its best to check activities of saboteurs.

He also appealed to the citizens to join hands with the government in that regard.

“On the issue of power, it seems Nigerians are their own problems. You can recall about four weeks ago, the power ministry came out to say that the megawatts we had was 5070, which is an all-time high in 16 years,” he said.

“A few days after, some people blew installations in Bayelsa, we lost about 1600 megawatts immediately. After that, installation was blown in Delta and we lost another 1,000 megawatts. What would the government do in that kind of circumstance?

“If the people who should be provided power are the ones sabotaging installations, they can’t turn round to say government is not providing power. Nigerians need to determine what they want. If South Africa has about 50,000 megawatts, it is because their own people are not sabotaging their installations, they are not going to blow up the lines. If Nigerians continue to blow up and sabotage, then they can’t come around to say that there is no power.”

When asked if he was insinuating that government had become helpless in protecting vital infrastructure, he said: “Government is not helpless, and government should never be helpless. A government that is worth its’ salt should never be helpless, but there are so many things that the government can deploy attention to, and when the attention is focused on securing installation instead of what we can call other weightier matters of the law.

“It is just a waste of time. We are wasting our time as a country, because other countries don’t have that distraction, they don’t have to deploy troops to monitor installations, because nobody would sabotage installations since he knows the thing is for his own good. I think, in this country we need to get to a point where we should realize that when we do certain things, we are hurting ourselves and not the government.”