Nigerians attacking Buhari over ‘Criminals’ remark displayed incomplete understanding – Presidency reacts

The Presidency in a statement released by the SSA to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu on Tuesday, denied accusations that President Muhammadu Buhari referred to Nigerians as asylum seeking criminals in an interview granted to the UK’s Telegraph newspaper on February 5, 2016.

According to the statement, the Presidency said the wave of negative comments and attacks over the President’s comment was as a display of incomplete understanding of the point President Buhari was trying to convey.

“President Buhari was asked about the flood of migrants from Nigeria and the fraudulent applications for asylum put in by people desperate to leave their motherland at any cost, and it was this question that elicited his response,” he said, encouraging Nigerians to avail themselves of a full text of the interview, which has now been made available on the Telegraph’s website.

Garba Shehu added that it was preposterous for anyone to imagine that the President of Nigeria would describe all the citizens of the country he leads as criminals, when he himself is a Nigerian–obviously not a criminal–and when there are many Nigerians of honest living making their country proud all over the world.

“Unfortunately, there are also Nigerians giving their country a bad image abroad, and it is to those Nigerians that the President referred in his comments,” he said, adding that people may play politics and online games with the President’s comments, but the fact of the matter remains that Nigeria’s reputation abroad has been severely damaged by her own citizens.

“These Nigerians who leave their country to go and make mischief on foreign shores have given the rest of us a bad reputation that we daily struggle to overcome.”

Garba Shehu called attention to the many efforts of President Buhari to clean up the image of Nigeria, such as the war on corruption, stating that acknowledging you have a problem is the first step to preferring a solution.

“President Buhari is very aware of the problems the people of Nigeria face both at home and abroad, and he is not shying away from admitting them even as he focuses on solutions to bring them to a permanent end.”

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