Reject ambitious critics, Presidency tells Nigerians -

The Presidency on Wednesday called on
Nigerians to be wary of persons it described as “critics with selfish
ambitions and ulterior motives.”

The Senior Special Assistant to the
President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, made the call in a
statement made available to journalists in response to the rising
criticisms against the administration.

Although Shehu did not mention any name,
former President Olusegun Obasanjo has been a leading critic of the
Muhammadu Buhari administration over alleged non-performance.

Only on Monday, Obasanjo attacked Buhari again and described his government as a failure.

But the presidential spokesman said
Nigerians should count the blessings the administration had brought to
the country’s economy, and the other areas the government was making
effort to address the people’s needs.

Shehu said, “We are only saying that we must learn to pause and count our blessings.

“The loud voices of critics with selfish
ambitions and ulterior motives should not be a veil that keeps
Nigerians blind to the many ways God has blessed us and improved our lot
through the Buhari administration.”

Shehu recalled that in 2017, the World
Bank ranked Nigeria among the top 10 reforming economies in the world.
That, he said, was in recognition of the growth and development-oriented
economic policies of the administration.

According to him, foreign investors and businessmen now arrive in Nigeria and get their visas at the airport without any hassle.

He said this was one of the reasons why
Nigeria advanced 24 steps in the global ‘Ease of Doing Business’
rankings of the World Bank.

He added, “The government is spending
more on infrastructure than previous administrations, despite earning
barely half of what the country earned from oil between 2011 and 2014
when the product was selling for an average of $110 per barrel.

“The latest GDP figures show continued
growth after the Buhari administration successfully brought the country
out of recession, with virtually all the sectors of the economy now on
the rebound, and significant progress recorded in agriculture.

“This administration has also ushered in
significant progress in agriculture, where output has risen in local
production and Nigeria is now importing 80 to 90 per cent less rice than
in previous years.”

He mentioned the resuscitation of
fertiliser plants as yet another achievement of the Buhari
administration, saying that the development had caused the prices of
fertiliser to drop and made young people to go into agriculture.

“Has anyone heard of the
Graduates-in-Agriculture Scheme in several states of the federation, a
self-driven, government-assisted programme by which our young men and
women are stopping their endless wait for white-collar jobs and creating
wealth for themselves and the nation?

“Power generation and distribution have more than doubled from 2015 when President Buhari took power to the present.”

Shehu also recalled that in his address
at the 10th Bola Tinubu Colloquium last week, Vice-President Yemi
Osinbajo reported that the present administration had put in place “an
audacious Social Investment Programme to the tune of N500bn, saying it
was the largest pro-poor programme in the nation’s history and the
largest social safety net, at least in sub-Saharan Africa.

“We have seen today the empirical
evidence of the successes of this programme, and all of that is evident
for us to see and listen to several testimonies and stories. 200,000
jobs for undergraduates employed under the N-Power programme, 300,000
more waiting to be employed; they have been pre-selected; over seven
million children being fed daily in 22 states so far; beneficiaries of
micro-credit loans going to about 300,000; and almost 300,000 households
benefiting from conditional cash transfers.”

In line with its campaign promises,
Shehu said the administration would spend trillions of naira to build
railways, roads and increase power supply.

On the spending on infrastructure, he again quoted the Vice-President as
saying, “In 2014, when oil was at between $100 and $1149 a barrel, the
actual releases for capital for three ministries — power, works and
housing (then they were three separate ministries) was in total N99bn;
transportation got N14bn while agriculture got N15 bn. I am talking
about actual releases, not budgeted, what they actually got. Let us
compare that with capital releases to the same ministries in 2017, when
oil price was between $50 and $60 a barrel, N415bn for power, works and
housing, N80bn for transportation; N65bn for agriculture; totalling
N560bn, at a time when we were earning at least 50 per cent less than we
were earning in 2014.”

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