President Buhari replies Jonathan, says his government has performed well
Mr. Jonathan had last Thursday said that the government of his successor is full of lies and propaganda and has achieved nothing since coming on board.
President Muhammadu Buhari said his administration has recorded concrete achievements which are there for all to see, contrary to the assertion by immediate past president Goodluck Jonathan that the administration is running on propaganda and lies.
However, Mr. Buhari on Monday insisted that his government has performed well since coming into office in 2015.
He was represented at the occasion by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed.
President Buhari listed the achievements of the APC led government to include:
Security:
President Buhari related how Boko Haram has been so degraded that it lacks the capacity to carry out any organised attack, while also increasingly losing the capacity to even attack soft targets.
It was stated that Boko Haram no longer holds any territory and that the same vigour is being used to address the herdsmen-farmers’ clash, kidnapping for ransom and other crimes
Fuel supply sector:
President Buhari stated that Jonathan PDP led government did not tell Nigerians that where they paid between 800 billion and 1.3 trillion Naira as’ subsidy’ yearly in their time, without making the products available even at regulated prices, his administration is not paying any subsidy, yet all products are currently available at competitive prices and fuel queues are now history.
He further stated that in their time, they paid subsidy of 3.7 billion Naira daily in 2011; 2.2 billion Naira daily in 2012 and 2013, and 2.5 billion Naira daily in 2014, all for products that were never available.
Power generation:
President Buhari said that those who accused this government of ‘propaganda and lies’ also said we have not achieved anything in the power sector. When this Administration assumed office on 29 May 2015, available power on the grid totalled 2,690MW, transmission capacity was around 5,000MW and distribution capacity was 4,000MW.
Infrastructure and agriculture revolution:
Mr. Buhari said it is an irony that those who presided over a budget of 18 billion Naira for roads, 5 billion Naira for power and 1.8 billion Naira for Housing in 2015 are now accusing those who spent 198.25 billion Naira on roads, 91.2 billion Naira on power and 71.559 billion Naira on housing in the following year of non-achievement?
“Because of the increased spending in these areas, the massive debts owed to contractors are being settled so they can recall workers who were laid off and re-open closed work sites. As a matter of fact, during the implementation of the 2016 budget, we paid 103 construction companies executing 192 projects, and they, in turn, employed 17,749 people directly and 52,000 people indirectly in works.
“So far this year, 47.169 billion Naira has been paid to 62 contractors working on 149 projects to continue work on roads and bridges and keep people at work. Similar payments are being made to supervising consultants and to contractors in Housing and Power Sectors of the Ministry,” he said.
Inflation:
The president also highlighted the achievements that have been recorded by his administration in the area of the economy, wondering whether it is ‘propaganda and lies’ that headline “Inflation has now fallen for the eighth consecutive month; that foreign exchange reserves are up to $32 billion, from $24 billion a year ago: that oil production is at nearly 2 million barrels per day and that Home-grown School Feeding Programme now being implemented in 17 States is benefiting more than 3 million public primary school children and more than 30,000 cooks across 20,000 schools”.
Unemployment:
President Buhari said close to 200,000 youth are now benefiting from the N-Power Programme, which recruits unemployed graduates to work as teachers, agricultural extension workers, and health extension workers; that the Government Enterprise & Empowerment Programme (GEEP), which provides micro-credit to farmers, traders, and artisans, now has in excess of 1 million beneficiaries, with women accounting for 56 per cent of that number, and that at about $1.8 billion, the capital inflows in the second quarter of 2017 were almost double the $908 million in the first quarter.
He said the biggest challenge facing government information managers is how to project the achievements of their principals against the background of worsening cases of disinformation and fake news, adding that the best way to tackle the problem is to remain focused, refuse to be distracted or intimidated and also to use facts and figures to counter “the purveyors of disinformation and fake news.”
