Lai Mohammed Speaks On Buhari's Achievements

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed said President Muhammadu Buahri's administration has done very well in the areas of social intervention programmes, economy, fight against corruption, security and the health sector.

Speaking to Sun, the Minister also explained the reason why the Federal Government decided to release the list of looters. On what the government has achieved so far, he said
"It is not for me to score him; it is for me to reel out what we have achieved. It is for the pubic to now say this is 1perecent, this is 2 percent, and this is 3 percent. Honestly, I can say without fear of equivocation that the government has done pretty well in the broad areas of economy, security and fighting corruption and the various social intervention.

"I can start with the economy for instance, and I will tell you that with less than half of the revenue available to the previous government, we have been able to start a revolution in infrastructure by devoting N1.3 trillion to capital projects ranging from roads to railways to water ways to agriculture. In the area of roads, we took a N100 billion Sukuk loan and with that loan we are undertaking 25 roads spread across the six geopolitical zones.

"Today, there is no area of government where you do not feel the impact of government on roads. Railways, the Lagos -Ibadan standard gauge will become operational I think at the end of 2018 or next year, meanwhile, the Calabar – Lagos has been awarded also. In the area of agriculture which is one area I think we have done very well, we have been able to create more rice farmers all over the country. From 5 million farmers, we have today about 11 million rice farmers. For you to see the rightness of our approach, so far, less than N100 billion has been invested in the anchor borrowers’ programme and we have this result.

"Meanwhile, the federal government has paid more than N1.2 trillion as bailout. I can imagine if just 10percent of that were to have been invested in agriculture, probably today we would be talking of self-sufficiency not only in rice but probably in cassava and probably in wheat.

"Our anchor borrowers’ programme has proven to be a success. In the area of the economy, you have heard me say that we inherited $23 billion in reserves; today we have $46 billion in foreign reserves. On ease of doing business we have moved from 165 to 145, in mining the activities in local mining have created thousands of jobs for people mining limestone and the rest.

"In the area of the economy whether in terms of figures about employment or in terms of social infrastructure, we have done what no government has done. I don’t know of any government in Nigeria that has either fed 7.5 million pupils in one day. To many people it is not important, but can you imagine if you are feeding 7 million pupils and if it costs you just N70 to feed each pupil, it means in a day you are creating an economy of N490million across the value chain of cooks, vendors and farmers. And this has led to an increase of school enrolment.

"All these have been done under three years and I think we are going to embark on a road show to inspect roads that are being done in virtually every state of the federation. We have been able to bring back many jobs by renewing these contracts and many of these contracts that this government is doing are contracts that were signed in 2007, 2009, and 2012. We have hardly awarded any new contract.

"In the area of power, we inherited 2,900 MWs of power; today we are generating more than 7,000 MW of power. Of course we are unable to transmit all the power because of the state of the transmission line, and don’t forget that even that power had been largely privatised even before we came in and we had been able to give support. We guaranteed N702 billion revolving loan that if you produce, we pay and that is why you have seen this exponential increase in power supply. So, I do not see any area where we cannot say we have not made progress."

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