President Buhari laments the country's challenges

President Muhammadu Buhari has stated that the nation is passing through a challenging moment owing to the total breakdown of its core values over the years.

 

The president lamented that the country was currently in a difficult situation "where hardly anything works in a normal manner."

Buhari was speaking at the Banquet Hall of the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja on Thursday while launching the National Re-Orientation Campaign tagged "Change Begins With Me".

According to President Buhari, there is no doubt that the country's value system has been badly eroded over the years.

Buhari said it was safe to say that honesty, hard work and Godliness had given way to all kinds of manifestations of lawlessness and degeneration in the national life.

He said that was why his administration had, among its cardinal objectives, change, "which implies the need for a change of attitude and mindset in our everyday life."

Buhari decried that the long-cherished and time-honoured, time-tested virtues of honesty, integrity, hard work, punctuality, good neighbourliness, abhorrence of corruption and patriotism had given way in the main to dishonesty, indolence, unbridled corruption and widespread impunity.

He stated: "The resultant effect of this derailment in our value system is being felt in the social, political and economic sphere. It is the reason that some youths will take to cultism and brigandage instead of studying hard or engaging in decent living; it is the reason that some elements will break pipelines and other oil facilities, thus robbing the nation of much-needed resources.

The president urged all Nigerians to have a change from their old ways of doing things, saying "we cannot fold our arms and allow things to continue the old way.

President Buhari congratulated the Ministry of Information and Culture and the National Orientation Agency for conceiving the campaign.

He charged all stakeholders to pursue it with vigour and ensure its sustenance by taking it to all the nooks and crannies of the country "with the aim of getting the buy in of the old, the young, the rich, the poor irrespective of gender or other social positions."