Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Yardy Speaks...

To the Financial Times

Excerpts from the interview
FT: It’s interesting you say that. A lot of Nigerians I speak to say you have been very slow in your reform programme? What do you say when you hear Nigerians saying that you are moving slowly?

YAR’ADUA: I smile, because I know, I have been a governor for eight years, I have also had some challenges to sort out, some problems. Because I know the quality of what you can achieve depends on how you plan a programme. You cannot make major achievements by just trying to rush things. The quality of your planning, the quality of your programmes, determine the nature of their achievements…What we have to learn to know is that you cannot achieve anything without planning, and planning is a long-term process. That is why I am saying that we need to produce a national plan to the year 2020.

FT: You’re not enjoying being president?

YAR’ADUA: It’s not I’m not enjoying, it’s a great responsibility. But I am aware, and I believe passionately that in this country we must respect law and order. And that having allowed respect law and order to break down is what is responsible for most of our national problems.

No president should come here and do what he likes, the president should come here and conduct himself according to laws, to the constitution, governing the conduct of this office. Unless we have that, we can never progress as a nation, there will always be corruption, there will always be indiscipline, we can never have the discipline to plan, we can never be able to develop as a nation, and we can never create the right environment for investment to take place.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello Ijebuman,

Thanks for the link, looks like a very interesting read, I would probably comment on it later on.

Akin