Nigeria’s Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo said he informed his boss, President Muhammadu Buhari that he was richer than him.
“When I looked at his assets declaration form, I was checking it in 2015, I said to him, ‘Mr President, I am so much richer than you, it is an embarrassment’.
“’He said, “I am only a soldier, you are a big lawyer so you should have more money than me’,” Osinbajo said last week while addressing volunteers who canvassed for votes for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) during the campaigns for this year’s general election at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
“I can tell you that he is perhaps; even poorer than he was in 2015 when I saw his declaration of assets form,” he said.
Recalling the experiences he had during the electioneering, Osinbajo said his encounter with Nigerians as he crisscrossed the country, campaigning for votes, showed that Nigerians are so trusting and supportive of their leaders.
“I think that one of the main characteristics of the Nigerian is how so supportive and trusting many of our people are and they don’t ask us for too much.
“They never really ask for anything that is impossible to do. And that’s why, for many of us that went around this country, we realized the tremendous amount of work that there is to do and our capacity to do so much work.
“What our people need, as we discovered, isn’t that much. As a matter of fact, I do not know any nation where the people are so generous no matter how poor they are,” the vice president and law professor said.
Osinbajo said there was need for the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari to connect more with the people.
“It just struck me that what we really need to do a lot more is to connect with the people. All the people need is opportunity for us to interact with them.
“We should have a way by which everybody is involved one way or the other.
“One of the complaints that people made about our government is that we were not communicating enough and that people did not know what had done,” he said.
The vice president acknowledged that the diligent communication carried out to put across the APC message in 2015 was not sustained, making the administration lose some ground to the opposition, especially on the social media.
He said the new administration would ensure that it makes changes in that regard.
Osinbajo said that he would take up everyone who has challenged the administration on the issue with a view to getting its communication of programmes and policies better.
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