We don’t have free money to give everybody – President Buhari tells Nigerians

President Muhammadu Buhari says his administration has no free money to give to everybody but it will continue to provide infrastructural facilities to all parts of the country with the meagre resources available.

The president stated this at the closing ceremony of the train the trainer workshop on voter education organized by the All Progressives Congress directorate of election planning and monitoring in Abuja, on Monday, January 28.

President Buhari pledged that the APC led administration would continue to build more roads, rail lines and provide more power for the speedy transformation of the country, The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

He, therefore, charged participants of the workshop to convince ordinary voters on the need to vote APC in the forthcoming elections

He said:

“Please try and convince our ordinary voters for the sacrifice they are making that as far as this system is concerned we are all the same because I have one vote each. “Let them feel they are important enough as Nigerian citizens. Therefore, we need their support and cooperation, let them come and vote for us.

“We don’t have money to give everybody. We will use the money for the provision of infrastructure – we will try and do your roads, we will try and do the rail and we will improve on power. “I assure you that I go to bed and wake up thinking about Nigerians and Nigeria.’’

President Buhari, who expressed optimism that the APC would emerge victorious in the forthcoming general elections, said the results of the recent bye-elections conducted in Edo, Ondo, Osun and Ekiti had further boosted his morale.

“The bye-elections in Kogi and Rivers were disastrous under the former party leadership as people were killed, properties lost and I as the President was very uncomfortable and unhappy.

“But the elections in Edo and Ondo partially resuscitated my morale because we won those elections. “And then of course, subsequently we have virtually been winning all bye-elections – Ekiti and Osun and so on.

“This is done not because merely we are in power but because we decided to rebuild the party from bottom upwards so that people that represent the party and members of the party at each constituency will know whom they would trust for nomination as their representatives at local, state and federal levels.

“These are not there by accident. We sat and planned them at the hierarchy of the party and I’m very pleased you are here representing all the constituencies in the country. “We have no other interest than to serve this country and to serve our people,’’ he said.

The president congratulated the participants for being nominated by the party in their constituencies to participate in the training programme so that they could go back to their respective constituencies and train others.

In his remarks, the APC Director of Election Planning and Monitoring, Babatunde Fashola, narrated the achievements of the governing APC in the over three years it has been in power. He explained that the achievements of the party in the period under review superseded that of the 16 years of People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

Fashola, who is the minister of power, works and housing, disclosed that beneficiaries of the training programme were expected to train other APC volunteers at their respective constituencies.

He expressed the hope that with the training of the APC volunteers at all levels, the party was poised to emerge with a landslide victory at the 2019 elections.