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| Acting President Addressing the Nation |
Yesterday was 29th May, Democracy for Nigerians and the
acting president customarily addressed the Nation on behalf of the ailing
president who is not in the country.
As true Nigerians, we all know that there are some
pressing issues burning in Nigerians that if not addressed could lead to catastrophe and several calls have been
made for those issues to be addressed
but the Presidency has paid deaf ears to those calls.
It is expected that on a speech making day like yesterday
some if not all of those issues should be addressed to calm the polity, but
the Acting president did not deem it fit to tow that direction.
I will try to list out some of those issues which the
president would have addressed and put the nation at peace or halt some of the
tension and anxieties
1.
Before president Buhari was jetted out of the
country for medical treatment, he wrote to the senate informing them he does
not know when he will be coming back. That his return is in the hands of his
medical doctors. On that note, many Nigerians were not expecting his return and
even if he does return but not too soon. Not long after an ex-British
Parliamentarian Eric Joyce, insisted that the president is dead and till date
no one seems to say anything about that either confirming or faulting the
report.
Nigerians thought acting President Osibanjo would have
used the opportunity of the democracy day to address the nation on the state of
our president’s health.
2.
Secondly
there have been calls from well meaning Nigerians and very senior citizens for
Nigeria to practice true federalism. In fact there have been a lot of arguments
as towhta is best fit for the the nation
while some are comfortable with secession others are agitating for true federalism.
Not too far from today, a one time vice
president of the federal republic of Nigeria Atiku Abubakar called for the nation to abolish states and rather propose
the use of Geo-political zones as federating units.
With all these agitations and calls mounting pressure on
the legislature and the Presidency, one expected the Acting President to have made
a statement to that effect.
3.
Recall
that some time ago, the president set up a panel to investigate the allegations of violations of law and due
process, made against the suspended SGF, in the award of contracts under the
Presidential Initiative on the North-East, and the $43 Million recovered by the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, in Ikoyi
The
Panel, comprising the National Security Adviser, NSA, Babagana Monguno, and the
Attorney-General of the Federation, AGF, Abubakar Malami, is headed by the Acting President Prof. Osibanjo
and was giving two weeks to submit their report. This is almost two months
going and the panel is yet to submit any report.
The investigation by the panel led to the suspension of the Director
General of the National Intelligence Agency, Ambassador Ayo Oke, SFG,
Babachir Lawal and Rotimi Amaechi, Minister for transport.
Nigerians would have loved to know the content of their report.
4.
What happened
to the National Conference Report Jonathan handed over to Buhari’s government?
There are many other issues Nigerians would want to know but time and
space will limit me to share them here, but below is the democracy day speech
by Prof, Osibanjo:
“Dear
Nigerians, I bring you good wishes from President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, who
as we all know is away from the country on medical vacation.
Today marks the second anniversary of our
assumption of office. We must thank the Almighty God not only for preserving our
lives to celebrate this second anniversary, but for giving us hope, strength
and confidence as we faced the challenges of the past two years.
Our administration outlined three specific
areas for our immediate intervention on assumption of office: these were
Security, Corruption and the Economy.
In the Northeast of our country, the
terrorist group Boko Haram openly challenged the sovereignty and continued
existence of the state, killing, maiming, and abducting, causing the
displacement of the largest number of our citizens in recent history. Beyond
the North East they extended their mindless killings, as far away as Abuja,
Kano And Kaduna.
But with new leadership and renewed
confidence our gallant military immediately began to put Boko Haram on the back
foot. We have restored broken-down relations with our neighbours, Chad,
Cameroon and Niger – allies without whom the war against terror would have been
extremely difficult to win.
We have re-organized and equipped our Armed
Forces, and inspired them to heroic feats; we have also revitalized the
regional Multinational Joint Task Force, by providing the required funding and
leadership.
The positive results are clear for all to
see. In the last two years close to one million displaced persons have returned
home. 106 of our daughters from Chibok have regained their freedom, after more
than two years in captivity, in addition to the thousands of other captives who
have since tasted freedom.
Schools, hospitals and businesses are
springing back to life across the Northeast, especially in Borno State, the
epicentre of the crisis. Farmers are returning to the farms from which they
fled in the wake of Boko Haram. Finally, our people are getting a chance to
begin the urgent task of rebuilding their lives.
Across the country, in the Niger Delta, and
in parts of the North Central region, we are engaging with local communities,
to understand their grievances, and to create solutions that respond to these
grievances adequately and enduringly.
President Buhari’s New Vision for the Niger
Delta is a comprehensive peace, security and development plan that will ensure
that the people benefit fully from the wealth of the region, and we have seen
to it that it is the product of deep and extensive consultations, and that it
has now moved from idea to execution.
Included in that New Vision is the
long-overdue environmental clean-up of the Niger Delta beginning with
Ogoni-land, which we launched last year.
More recent threats to security such as the
herdsmen clashes with farmers in many parts of the country sometimes leading to
fatalities and loss of livelihoods and property have also preoccupied our
security structures. We are working with State governments, and tasking our
security agencies with designing effective strategies and interventions that
will bring this menace to an end. We are determined to ensure that anyone who
uses violence, or carries arms without legal authority is apprehended and
sanctioned.
In the fight against corruption, we have
focused on bringing persons accused of corruption to justice. We believe that
the looting of public resources that took place in the past few years has to be
accounted for. Funds appropriated to build roads, railway lines, and power
plants, and to equip the military, that had been stolen or diverted into
private pockets, must be retrieved and the culprits brought to justice.
Many have said that the process is slow, and
that is true, corruption has fought back with tremendous resources and our
system of administration of justice has been quite slow. But the good news for
justice is that our law does not recognize a time bar for the prosecution of
corruption and other crimes, and we will not relent in our efforts to apprehend
and bring corruption suspects to justice.
We are also re-equipping our prosecution
teams, and part of the expected judicial reforms is to dedicate some specific
courts to the trial of corruption cases.
We are also institutionalizing safeguards and
deterrents. We have expanded the coverage of the Treasury Single Account (TSA).
We have introduced more efficient accounting and budgeting systems across the
Federal Government. We have also launched an extremely successful Whistleblower
Policy.
The Efficiency Unit of the Federal Ministry
of Finance has succeeded in plugging leakages amounting to billions of naira,
over the last two years. We have ended expensive and much-abused fertilizer and
petrol subsidy regimes.
We have taken very seriously our promise to
save and invest for the future, even against the backdrop of our revenue
challenges, and we have in the last two years added US$500m to our Sovereign
Wealth Fund and US$87m to the Excess Crude Account. This is the very opposite
of the situation before now, when rising oil prices failed to translate to rising
levels of savings and investment.
Admittedly, the economy has proven to be the
biggest challenge of all. Let me first express just how concerned we have been,
since this administration took office, about the impact of the economic
difficulties on our citizens.
Through no fault of theirs, some companies
shut down their operations, others downsized; people lost jobs, had to endure
rising food prices. In some States civil servants worked months on end without
the guarantee of a salary, even as rents and school fees and other expenses
continued to show up like clockwork.
We have been extremely mindful of the many
sacrifices that you have had to make over the last few years. And for this
reason this administration’s work on the economic front has been targeted at a
combination of short-term interventions to cushion the pain, as well as medium
to long term efforts aimed at rebuilding an economy that is no longer
helplessly dependent on the price of crude oil.
Those short-term interventions include
putting together a series of bailout packages for our State Governments, to
enable them bridge their salary shortfalls – an issue the President has
consistently expressed his concerns about. We also began the hard work of
laying out a framework for our Social Intervention Programme, the most
ambitious in the history of the country.
One of the first tasks of the Cabinet and the
Economic Management Team was to put together a Strategic Implementation Plan
for the 2016 budget, targeting initiatives that would create speedy yet lasting
impact on the lives of Nigerians.
Indeed, much of 2016 was spent clearing the
mess we inherited and putting the building blocks together for the future of
our dreams; laying a solid foundation for the kind of future that you deserve
as citizens of Nigeria.
In his Budget Presentation Speech to the
National Assembly last December, President Buhari outlined our Economic Agenda
in detail, and assured that 2017 -would be the year in which you would begin to
see tangible benefits of all the planning and preparation work. It is my
pleasure to note that in the five months since he delivered that speech, we
have seen tremendous progress, as promised.
Take the example of our Social Investment
Programme, which kicked off at the end of 2016. Its Home Grown School Feeding
component is now feeding more than 1 million primary school children across
seven states and would be feeding three million by the end of the year.
N-Power, another component has engaged 200,000 unemployed graduates – none of
whom needed any ‘connections’ to be selected.
Beneficiaries are already telling the stories
of how these initiatives have given them a fresh start in their lives.
Micro credit to a million artisans, traders
and market men and women has begun. While conditional cash transfers to
eventually reach a million of the poorest and most vulnerable households has
also begun.
Road and power projects are ongoing in every
part of the country. In rail, we are making progress with our plans to attract
hundreds of millions of dollars in investment to upgrade the existing 3,500km
narrow-gauge network. We have also in 2017 flagged-off construction work on the
Lagos-Ibadan leg of our standard-gauge network, and are close to completing the
first phase of Abuja’s Mass Transit Rail System.
In that Budget speech in December, the
President announced the take-off of the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative.
Today, five months on, that Initiative – the product of an unprecedented
bilateral cooperation with the Government of Morocco – has resulted in the
revitalisation of 11 blending plants across the country, the creation of 50,000
direct and indirect jobs so far, and in the production of 300,000 metric tonnes
of NPK fertilizer, which is being sold to farmers at prices significantly lower
than what they paid last year. By the end of 2017, that Fertilizer Initiative
would have led to foreign exchange savings of US$200 million; and subsidy
savings of 60 billion naira.
The Initiative is building on the solid gains
of the Anchor Borrowers Programme, launched in 2015 to support our rice and
wheat farmers, as part of our move towards guaranteeing food security for
Nigeria.
All of this is evidence that we are taking
very seriously our ambition of agricultural self-sufficiency. I am delighted to
note that since 2015 our imports of rice have dropped by 90 percent, while
domestic production has almost tripled. Our goal is to produce enough rice to
meet local demand by 2019.
In April, the President launched our Economic
Recovery and Growth Plan which built on the foundations laid by the Strategic
implementation Plan of 2016. The plan has set forth a clear vision for the
economic development of Nigeria. I will come back to this point presently.
Another highlight of the President’s Budget
Speech was our work around the Ease of Doing Business reforms. As promised we
have since followed up with implementation and execution. I am pleased to note
that we are now seeing verifiable progress across several areas, ranging from
new Visa on Arrival scheme, to reforms at our ports and regulatory agencies.
The President also promised that 2017 would
see the rollout of Executive Orders to facilitate government approvals, support
procurement of locally made goods, and improve fiscal responsibility. We have
kept that promise. This month we issued three Executive Orders to make it
easier for citizens to get the permits and licenses they require for their
businesses, to mandate Government agencies to spend more of their budgets on
locally produced goods, and to promote budget transparency and efficiency. The
overarching idea is to make Government Agencies and Government budgets work
more efficiently for the people.
The impact of our Ease of Doing Business work
is gradually being felt by businesses small and large; its successful take-off
has allowed us to follow up with the MSME Clinics -our Small Business support
programme, which has taken us so far to Aba, Sokoto, Jos, Katsina, and we
expect to be in all other states in due course.
Let me note, at this point, that several of
our Initiatives are targeted at our young people, who make up most of our
population. From N-Power, to the Technology Hubs being developed nationwide, to
innovation competitions such as the Aso Villa Demo Day, and our various MSME
support schemes, we will do everything to nurture the immense innovative and
entrepreneurial potential of our young people. We are a nation of young people,
and we will ensure that our policies and programmes reflect this.
One of the highlights of our Power Sector
Recovery Programme, which we launched in March, is a N701 billion Naira Payment
Assurance Scheme that will resolve the financing bottlenecks that have until
now constrained the operations of our gas suppliers and generation companies.
Let me assure that you will soon begin to see the positive impact of these
steps.
Our Solid Minerals Development Fund has also
now taken off, in line with our commitment to developing the sector. Because of
our unerring focus on Solid Minerals development over the last two years, the
sector has, alongside Agriculture, seen impressive levels of growth – in spite
of the recession.
On the whole, just as the President promised
in the Budget Speech, these early months of 2017 have seen the flowering of the
early fruit of all the hard work of our first eighteen months.
We opened the year with an overwhelmingly
successful Eurobond Offer – evidence of continuing investor interest in
Nigeria. We have also launched the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP)
2017-2020, to build on the gains of last year’s Strategic Implementation Plan.
And the implementation of our 2017 Budget, which will soon be signed into law,
will bring added impetus to our ongoing economic recovery. In the 2016 Budget
we spent 1.2 Trillion Naira on infrastructure projects, another milestone in the
history of this country. Our 2017 Budget will double that investment.
That budget also provides for substantial
investment to implement the rollout of Industrial Parks and Special Economic
Zones (SEZs), as well as our Social Housing Programme. The Industrial Parks and
Economic Zones will fulfill our ambition of making Nigeria a manufacturing hub,
while the Family Home Fund of our Social Housing Programme will provide
inexpensive mortgages for low-income individuals and families across the
country.
These plans offer yet more evidence that we
are ramping up the pace of work; the work of fulfilling all that we promised.
In the next two years we will build on the successes of the last two. We have
demonstrated a willingness to learn from our mistakes and to improve on our
successes.
The critical points that we must address
fully in the next two years are : Agriculture and food security, Energy, (power
and Petroleum,) Industrialization and Transport infrastructure. Every step of
the way we will be working with the private sector, giving them the necessary
incentives and creating an environment to invest and do business.
Our vision is for a country that grows what
it eats and produces what it consumes. It is for a country that no longer has
to import petroleum products, and develops a lucrative petrochemical industry.
Very importantly it is for a country whose fortunes are no longer tied to the
price of a barrel of crude, but instead to the boundless talent and energy of its
people, young and old, male and female as they invest in diverse areas of the
economy.
And that vision is also for a country where
the wealth of the many will no longer be stolen by or reserved for a few; and
where the impunity of corruption – whether in the public or private sectors –
will no longer be standard operating practice; a land rid of bandits and
terrorists.
As citizens you all deserve a country that
works, not merely for the rich or connected, but for everyone. And our promise
to you is that we will, with your support and cooperation, take every step
needed to create that country of our dreams.
We also know that this journey will of
necessity take time. But we will not succumb to the temptation to take
short-cuts that ultimately complicate the journey. We did not find ourselves in
crises overnight, and we simply do not expect overnight solutions to our
challenges.
The most important thing is that we are on
the right path, and we will not deviate from it, even in the face of strong
temptation to choose temporary gain over long-term benefit. As the President
has summed it up: “The old Nigeria is slowly but surely disappearing, and a new
era is rising.”
And so we commemorate this second anniversary
of our administration with confidence and optimism. I firmly believe that we
have put the most difficult phase behind us; and we are witnesses to the
ever-increasing intensity of the light at the end of the tunnel.
We ask for your continued cooperation and
support, to enable us realise all our best intentions and ambitions for
Nigeria. On our part We will continue to carry you along on this journey, speak
to you, explain the challenges, and share our Vision.
And while we all daily pre-occupy ourselves
with pursuing the Nigerian Dream – which is the desire to better our lives and
circumstances vigorously and honestly – it is inevitable that grievances and
frustrations will arise from time to time.
This is normal. What is not normal, or
acceptable, is employing these frustrations as justification for indulging in
discrimination or hate speech or hateful conduct of any kind, or for seeking to
undermine by violent or other illegal means the very existence of the sovereign
entity that has brought us all together as brothers and sisters and citizens.
Nigeria belongs to all of us. No one person
or group of persons is more important or more entitled than the other in this
space that we all call home. And we have a responsibility to live in peace and
harmony with one another, to seek peaceful and constitutional means of
expressing our wishes and desires, and to resist all who might seek to sow
confusion and hatred for their own selfish interests.
Before I end this speech, let me ask for your
continued prayers for the restoration to full health and strength and the safe
return of our President.
I congratulate all of you on today’s
commemoration of this important day in the democratic calendar our country.
Nigeria is on a journey of greatness, and together we shall arrive at the
destination of our dreams.
May God bless you all, and bless the Federal
Republic of Nigeria.”
Ukorebi Esien
Blogs and Edits for TDN
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