Buhari never called all Nigerians criminals, presidency clarifies

    

In a statement yesterday by the media aide to Pres. Buhari, Mr. Garba Shehu, as regards Mr. Buhari’s comments in an interview granted to the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper on February 5, the State House said

Nigerians misconstrued the president.

Shehu said: “Pres. 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.”

“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 might play politics and online games with the president’s comments, but the fact of the matter remained that Nigeria’s reputation abroad had 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,” Shehu said. Shehu urged Nigerians to avail themselves of a full text of the interview, which he said is available on the Telegraph’s website.

In the interview, Pres. Buhari had said: “We have an image problem abroad and we are on our way to salvage that. Some Nigerians claim is that life is too difficult back home, but they have also made it difficult for Europeans and Americans to accept them because of the number of Nigerians in prisons all over the world accused of drug trafficking or human trafficking. I don’t think Nigerians have anybody to blame. They can remain at home, where their services are required to rebuild the country.”…. no b by force to go Dubai……