The Honourable Minister for Works David Umahi has urged Nigerians to support President Ahmed Tinubu’s administration which is working hard to secure the future of the country and her citizens.
According to Umahi, the President is making hard decisions to secure the future of the citizens and If supported, will do great for the country.
The Minister made this known while interacting with Journalists during the celebration of one year in office of President Ahmed Tinubu and Governor Francis Nwifuru in Abakaliki.
He then noted that the hardship and challenges facing the country recently were because the government of President Tinubu, inherited a very terrible economy and the economy is not just peculiar to Nigeria.
“The fact is that not even the Buhari administration created this hardship. We are all guilty of this hardship and there will be more hardship unless we begin to re-examine ourselves. I remember in 1977 when Nigeria had so much money and they say they did not know what to do with that money. I think they said they staged FESTAC because they did not know what to do with the money and they threw it away.
“There must be a solid foundation being laid. If you want to make an omelet, you must break an egg. One of the key ways to revive our beings is to work. You remember when I was the governor, I fought leaders who would want me to work but to share the money. So, we need to begin to work.
“If you go to China, you will not see young people during working hours, you will not. So the President is tmakinghard decision to secure our future. You can call him all sorts of names because the job is very easy when you are not the one doing it.
“We inherited a very terrible economy and the economy is not just peculiar to Nigeria, even our own has a different dimension, but it is not the worst in the world. But there is global economic meltdown and so we are not isolated.
“The President is taking hard decisions and I believe strongly that if we support the President, if we are a little bit patient, he said to me in Lagos we have crossed the cuff which means that we have crossed the worst. When God brings you, it is for an assignment and the manners and the way the President came defiling all permutations, obstacles, and challenges set up against him, you will see he is a divine President. You will recall that Nigerians prayed and prayed.
“I thought it was the set time that God has remembered Nigerians. They said that dawn is the darkest part of the Night. So, there is Asiwaju and there is hope and there is Dave and our infrastructure which is a catalyst. We are on the right path I can tell you,” he said.
Speaking on the shunning journalists, Umahi, debunked the reports by some media houses, stating that he rushed out of the venue to catch his flight when he noticed that some of the media houses he invited were not present at the meeting even after an hour late.
His words: “Why would I walk out of journalists I invited? we scheduled to meet by 2 pm and by 2 pm they were not ready so it was shifted to 3 pm by that time they were not ready so I shifted it to Monday next week.
“I had a flight by 3 pm to be in Abakaliki so that I will be part of the first anniversary in office of my Governor, so I shifted the meeting”.
“The media have done well for me in reporting the activities of my Ministry and Mr. President, I can’t do without the media, they are my friends and I appreciate their support towards my Ministry”.
“They all worked hard for us during President Bola Tinubu ‘s inauguration of projects in Lagos and I wanted to thank them profusely.
“I wanted the appreciation to be surprising to the selected media houses but my media aide didn’t handle it properly.
“Reports of shunning journalists, therefore, do not exist because I cannot invite and shun them at the same time,” the minister said.