muhammadu president buhari addressed the guest during democracy day.

President Muhammadu Buhari addresses the guests during the Democracy Day Lecture held at the International Conference Centre in Abuja In its immediate reaction however, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, said President Buhari should rather be afraid of his rejection by Nigerians who have made up their minds to throw him out in 2019 as a result of his failure in government President Buhari, in his speech, when the Buhari Media Organization, BMO, paid him a courtesy visit at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, sympathised with those who were supporting his government in view of the increasing opposition against him.
He however appreciated the efforts of members of the group who he said may have lost their friends for just supporting him, stressing that it was a great sacrifice
they were making without financial rewards.
According to him, “I don’t think I can thank you enough for your steadfastness under very difficult circumstances. It is not easy to defend this administration and more in particular to defend me.
“But your consistency has given me a lot of confidence.
And I know you are doing it as a sacrifice   not only in terms of physical or mental but material sacrifice.
“Because as I keep on saying, the opposition elements are now sitting on incredible resources which I am afraid we might not match at all. For that reason the opposition
is sponsoring mischief from different angles which in spite of the incumbency of government we cannot
absolutely stop. “It is you who are fighting it and I cannot thank you enough for that. Most of the people I jailed have been
given back all that they had taken before I was jailed”.
The President then went on memory lane on the decision he took as a military head of state where he ordered the arrest, detention and prosecution of those who allegedly
looted public funds, but also noted that those who were found not guilty were discharged.
He said, “Most of those people who were judged by the various tribunals have been given back what they have taken. I spent 18 months in detention and luckily they did
not find anything against me and I was released. But my problem was that there was a journalist from Edo State
who wrote an article on me that my mother had to die to save me. This was because I was only released when my mother died to go and bury her. Of course, you know as a
Muslim tradition demands that you are buried where you
die. “So, I can appreciate the sacrifices most of you sitting here have made in terms of materialism or even losing some of your friends to continue to support me. I have
been here for three years and you have proved to people that you are not here for material things, but out of sacrifice and the strength of the moral courage you have
is the the strength of the physical, it is the strength of losing the friends you have.