Empty Treasury Made Buhari To Appoint Ministers Late - Bakare

Tunde Bakare, the general overseer of the Latter Rain Assembly has said empty treasury made President Muhammadu Buhari to appoint ministers lately.

 

Mr Buhari after he was sworn in as president ran the government without ministers for six months, which economists say was responsible for recession the economy went into.

Mr Bakare’s account differs from that of the presidency which blamed the administration of former president, Goodluck Jonathan, for the delay in constituting the cabinet.

Mr Jonathan, in his new book titled ‘My Transition Hours,’ pushed back the blame.

For the cleric, the president wasted time in constituting his cabinet because there was no money to pay them.

He stated this in a interview he granted Heritage Media in Calgary, Canada.

Bakare said Buhari did not assemble the best cabinet that will turn things around unlike those of his predecessors.

“Development under President Buhari has been slow because as he said, he inherited an empty treasury,” he said.

“For six months, he could not appoint ministers because there was no money to pay them, and little by little, thank God, oil picked up.

“But a person like Obasanjo will now attack him and say, rightly, the price of oil had fallen completely and I met an empty treasury but I didn’t give excuses, I worked.

“But the difference is this, Obasanjo assembled the best, the brightest from across the nations of the earth, economists that knew their onions, to begin to help steer the affairs of the nation, and that is less seen in this administration,” Bakare added.

The cleric also advised the president to deal with alleged corrupt cronies of his administration.

“The allegations by the Nigerian public is that those around the president are also stealing, and some names have been mentioned. You cannot be a clean man surrounded by rogues, if you don’t deal with those rogues, they would colour you with the same tar,” Bakare added.