Posted by In anticipation of 2023, President Muhammadu Buhari has issued a message to Nigerians.
Some crucial national concerns were covered in the President’s statement. The general elections in 2023 are prominent among them.
Buhari also mentioned that this would be his final New Year’s address as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces since he will vacate the Presidential Villa in May 2023.
Here is the President’s entire speech:
My Brothers and Sisters in Country.
I wish you a very happy and successful new year.
The Almighty, who gave us the chance to live through another year and saw us through 2022, deserves our gratitude and respect first. Every New Year offers the chance to take stock of the previous year, realign, and start fresh.
We must acknowledge the passing of our brothers and sisters who did not live to see the year 2023 while we rejoice in the opportunity to be alive. May they rest in eternal peace.
Since this message is essentially my farewell address, this year is especially significant to me. My service as your president must inevitably come to an end after having the honor of serving you, my fellow countrymen, for the past seven plus years in the most venerable tradition of our enduring and developing democracy. A new president, new governors, and a myriad of other elected officials at the national and state levels would have been chosen in the following five months at the polls.
Because of your transcendent convictions that go above partisan politics, you, the great citizen of Nigeria, are able to make all these electoral and democratic principles function together. Additionally, I personally and personally guarantee to follow through on INEC’s rigorous efforts to conduct free and fair elections in 2023. Even in the final hours of my watch, the collective electoral will and votes of Nigerians will be fulfilled.
We may evaluate our achievements and problems as a government by thinking back to the year 2022. We must all recognize that governance is a continuum and that this administration still has a transitional duty to give the new administration a neutral and objective road plan for 2023 while we celebrate our successes and analyze our setbacks. Where others have fallen and fragmented, we as Nigeria—one nation unified under the will of God and actively expanding as an indivisible entity—have been able to weather all choppy waters year after year, decade after decade. Because of this, we are a distinctive nation on our continent and in the world.
Nigerians will exercise their right to vote and choose a new administration in 2023. This is a crucial year for our nation since it will allow for another smooth transfer of power to the chosen candidate. We will have free and fair elections across the country thanks to the historic Amended Electoral Act passed by this administration. By abstaining from anti-state activity and other nefarious activities that could have an impact on the election’s outcome, Nigerians must also assume responsibility for our part in helping to ensure that the 2023 elections are free and fair. We must also thwart any attempts by politicians to stir up unrest in any way in order to scuttle the elections. Government officials will make sure that such actions are dealt with the full weight of the law.
As our security agencies continue to uphold the nation’s honor, we must continue to support our defenders by supplying crucial local intelligence. We must all work together to keep Nigeria a safe and secure place for all of us. In order to support our military and intelligence agencies, we therefore have a responsibility to stay vigilant and report anything suspicious. Over the past year, the North East region’s war against insurgency has consistently earned resounding victories. The path of reuniting internally displaced people with their ancestral houses, which the militants had earlier taken, has been commenced by the federal government and the government of Borno State. Additionally, the Nigerian military has accepted the surrender of approximately 82,000 rebels and their families. The rehabilitation (Operation Safe Corridor) program is now processing a number of militants who have been turned in. In the North West and other areas, the war against banditry, kidnapping, and other crimes is picking up steam and producing highly noticeable results. One of them is the restart of train service between Kaduna and Abuja.
Our administration paid attention in the wake of the EndSars and launched the continuing Police Reform initiative based on a new Presidential Vision for Policing in Nigeria. Current new vision is based on six principles and is presented in a clear road map that goes beyond the term of this administration: Building trust and legitimacy, leadership, accountability, and oversight, technology and digital media, community policing and crime reduction, officer training and education, and funding, as well as the welfare, health, and safety of officers, are just a few of the topics covered.
Even while this reform initiative is still very much in its early stages, it has made notable progress toward raising police salaries and welfare. The continued training of 500 police cadet trainers has also been successful in improving the training program for the initial 10,000 new cadets, with an additional 10,000 expected in 2023. The Nigeria Police has been given new tools to gradually improve on its constitutional duties to uphold law and order, safeguard lives and property, and maintain general security on the streets in support of these reforms.
We have survived the storms despite the ongoing global economic crisis. Global inflation is at its peak, yet the federal government is determined to stay afloat during this time through its economic measures. The combined impacts of COVID-19’s aftereffects and continuous wars were felt in 2022. We continue to subsidize our energy expenses to protect households from the inflationary pressure of high energy costs, despite the fact that this creates its own budgetary issues. In 2023, we intend to increase GDP while maintaining the sharp increase in non-oil GDP growth.
A law enacting the Nigerian Startup Bill has been passed. By encouraging job creation and fostering the entrepreneurial spirit of our young people, this is seen as a significant step in reducing our unemployment rates. Remember from my 2021 New Year’s address that we must safeguard the future of our children since they are both at home and abroad our most precious natural resource. In this regard, we collaborated with the legislature to create an enabling law to help them transform their interests into concepts that can be encouraged, developed, and scaled across geographical areas. The Nigerian Start Up Act will be put into effect countrywide in 2023.
In fact, we would be working to solidify the accomplishment of important strategic targets within our “SEA” (Security, Economy, and Anti-Corruption) Agenda in 2023. Some of the top priorities in which we would focus our efforts and strengths are as follows:
Focus on SECURITY; we will keep up the fight against internal and external extremist and criminal organisations that are waging war against our communities around the country. Additionally, we’ll work to make sure that in February 2023, free and fair elections will take place. To ensure that the victories we have achieved in the fight against insurgency, banditry, secession, and other crimes are maintained and new victories are attained, our security forces collaborate.
b. For the economy, our focus would be on sustaining and enhancing economic growth through a national economic diversification plan that supports the objective of increasing non-oil sources and national food self-sufficiency. Our administration’s ongoing infrastructure revolution will enable us to complete the major power, rail, road, port, and technology projects across the country.
c. ANTICORRUPTION: As part of our administration’s anti-corruption push, we have increased convictions from 117 in 2017 to 3,615 as of December 2022, setting new milestones in this battle. We as a government are committed to defeating corruption in all its manifestations, and we will work with the other branches of the government to do so.
As we ring in the new year, let’s look forward with optimism to 2023, a year in which we can advance as a country toward harmony, development, and prosperity. In consideration of the varied viewpoints and interpretations of our executive legacies, I extend my own personal congratulations. I hope that the next President will take up the mantle and continue the effort to make Nigeria one of the top nations in the world by the end of this century. I welcome and accept both the praise and the criticism in equal measure, confident in the knowledge that I did my best to serve our dear country Nigeria.
Live long and prosper the spirit of unity, cohesion, and oneness in Nigeria. The Federal Republic of Nigeria is eternal. A happy and successful new year to you.