Ngige: President Buhari Saved Nigeriafromthe‘VenezuelanBug’

Dr. Chris Ngige, minister of Labour & Productivity and a prominent figure from the eastern part of the country, is a quintessential patriot and by ideological leaning, an advocate of one indivisible Nigeria. In this interview with Iyobosa Uwugiaren, he to

You were one of those leaders of APC, who went around the country, convincing Nigerians to vote for Gen. Muhammed Buhari. Two years after, do you regret what you did?

I don’t at all regret my role in enthroning this government. In fact, if the opportunity presents itself again, with what I have seen now, I will do exactly the same thing. So, if anything, I feel happy every day when I wake up and as I pray to my God, I asked him to enable me to take important decisions with him, guarding me. If not for this government, the government of Muhammadu Buhari, government of change, Nigeria would have been worse than Venezuela. The crisis you have in Venezuela, the demonstrations in Venezuela, was as a result of the collapse of the whole economic firmament of that country.

Venezuela, like Nigeria, did not plan for the raining day. The leader was fighting America and showing off. He started establishing filling stations inside America and the Caribbean and giving petrol free. You come into Washington, into New York and Maryland, where I was staying, you’d see filling stations of Venezuela origins. They sell petrol free on certain days and they felt that they had arrived. So, when we went round the country, we saw what was looming but we didn’t know it was this bad.

But then, when that particular government of Goodluck Jonathan exited, what we would face was like a catastrophe. When we were going round, oil was selling then at about $70 per barrel. It had moved from $110 to $105 to $100 a barrel, and so, we thought it was not just that deep; and that we would eventually edge up again to flatten at $100 average. So, we told the Nigeria people that the major problem that we will fight is security, terrorism, which was the hallmark of the security situation in the Northeast then.

The Niger Delta wasn’t cleared and was just there. Then we have the issue of the internal security, which is what every government promises and what have you – security – which will be done by the police, civil defence and the rest of them. But the armed aggression was in the northeast and as we came in, a place like Borno State, out of the local government there, 14 of them were no longer part of Nigeria territory. The terrorist, Boko Haram had planted their flags. You go to Adamawa State, they