President Bola Tinubu said on Thursday he is doing things differently by embarking on difficult reforms that past leaders, including his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, avoided.

In his national broadcast to mark Nigeria’s 66th independence anniversary, Mr Tinubu said, “For too long, Nigeria’s leaders chose morphine while praying for a miracle that never came. They focused on symptoms while allowing the disease to take hold deep within the fabric of our society.

“We spent enormous sums sustaining inefficient arrangements that were never intended to last. We hid from difficult truths and passed the consequences from one generation to the next.”

The president, however, said his government was doing things differently with difficult reforms unlike his predecessors.

“When this administration assumed office, we resolved to do things differently. We chose to excise the cancer. The reforms that followed were difficult. The side effects were real. Yet, we must never confuse the medicine with the disease,” Mr Tinubu explained. “Our reforms did not create the weaknesses in our economy. They confronted them.”