Nigeria military has made it clear that it is set to crush the new Niger Delta militants that have been blowing up oil installations in the region.
The Acting Director, Defence Information, Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar confirmed that President Muhammadu Buhari has given special directive to the military to put a stop to the militants’ rampaging.
The President was also said to have ordered the Chief of Naval Staff, Rear Admiral Ibok-Ete Ekwe Ibas and the Chief of Naval Staff to ensure that all waterways and platforms were protected against further attacks by the militants.
General Abubakar said: “we have the order from the President and we are monitoring the activities of the new group. All efforts will be made to bring out those behind it.
“The suspects who perpetrated the first vandalism were apprehended and paraded the day before yesterday (Thursday).
“These ones are not going to be different. We are going out on our operation to stop and apprehend them in accordance with the presidential directive.
“We are not deterred; nobody is happy about it but we are not deterred from doing what we are doing. And more proactive measures would be put in place. What they are doing is complete economic sabotage; it is economic terrorism.” [myad]
Dr. Doyin Okupe, who was hired by the immediate past President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as his Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs, has confessed that his monthly salary was being paid by the embattled former National Security Adviser (NSA), retired Colonel Sambo Dasuki.
Okupe, who served under Jonathan from 2012 to 2015, made this confession on his official Twitter handle, against the backdrop report in January that Okupe got at least N1.6 billion off Dasuki in three shady cyber security contracts.
The former Jonathan’s spokesman insisted that he had nothing to do with the arms scam which cost the country over $15 billion in stolen funds.
“I was not paid arms deal money. The NSA paid for the running of my office monthly from August 2012. Dasukigate was in 2014. I did not take part in the campaign.”
However, a Twitter user, Ojezs responded to Okupe’s Twit by asking: “You’re just implicating yourself. Is it the NSA office that employed you?”
Another user, Ayoola Ayodeji, wrote: “you probably mistake some of us for hungry people. A day will come when you won’t be able to sleep because poor people are outside your gate.”
But Okupe responded by saying: “you guys are idiotic. You wait and pray for the innocent to be punished. It will not happen. You must think some of us are terrified.” [myad]
The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has said that the federal government will require a total of N1.7 trillion to complete about 206 road projects it awarded in the past.
Fashola said however that what was earmarked in the 2016 budget for the three ministries under him is N433 billion, adding that the ministry had decided to phase the road projects and complete them over the next three years, starting from high priority roads.
Speaking in Lagos at the African Alliance’s 2016 Investor Day Dinner, Fashola said as a way of overcoming the challenges in sustainable road infrastructure development, the government has upgraded the budget to finance infrastructure from 15 per cent which he said was the situation in the past to 30 per cent.
“This is the first step to sustainability. But it is not enough to budget. It is important to implement the budget and use the finances properly.
“Today, with about 206 road contracts already awarded in the past and not completed, it does not make sense to start any new roads when the amount needed to complete is about N1.7 trillion and the budget for the three ministries is N433 billion as proposed by the Executive.”
He said that the priority of his ministry is to finish as many already awarded road projects as possible. [myad]
The 2016 national budget was not only the first ever to be prepared and put forward for the upliftment of the country by the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, but so far, it had turned out to be the most or one of the most controversial in the history of Nigeria. It was obvious that immediately after being sworn-in on May 29 last year, as President and Commander-In-Chief of the Nigerian Army, Buhari swung into action not only to assemble his cabinet members, but to work on the 2016 Appropriation Bill. He subsequently presented the Bill to the joint session of the National Assembly on December 22nd last year. The President tagged the Bill: “Budget of Change,” signalling what could be a promising future for Nigeria; the Nigeria that was gradually sliding into economic morass, occasioned by decades of leadership failure, monumental corruption and mismanagement of the nation’s wealth by few powerful men and women around the corridors of power. The president, while presenting the budget on the floor of the joint National Assembly, promised a full implementation of the Bill when passed, which is a departure from the hitherto culture of lack of proper implementation of the budget. The leadership of the National Assembly promptly reacted to the zeal by which the President presented the budget by expressing readiness to do a thorough and speedy job to ensure its quick passage, even as they pledged their unwavering support to the President’s vision to transform the nation’s economy and rid the country of corruption and impunity. Unfortunately however, a few days after the presentation of the Buhari’s “Budget of Change,” the nation’s media came out with breaking news that the budget had disappeared from the National Assembly. Many Nigerians were sceptical about what was seen as a bizarre revelation until when the two arms of government, (Executive and legislature) began their dramatic accusations and counter accusations. From the disappearance, the story changed to Budget padding, which later snowballed into a new term of “budget cabal;” a new lexicon in the nation political history. While the executive accused the legislature of padding the budget, the legislature in turn accused the executive of same and the nation was left in the state of confusion and hopelessness. The cross-firing led the President to describe the situation as embarrassing for his government even as he promised to deal decisively with all those involved in the so called budget padding. A week after the President expressed shock over the controversies that trailed the presentation of the Appropriation Bill, a major shake-up was made in the ministry of budget and national planning, as well as in other relevant agencies. And after all the dramatic displays around the politics of budget padding between the two arms of government, on March 23, this year, the National Assembly passed the budget with unprecedented reduction in the original (executive) estimate and sent it to the President for assent without details. The President of course, smelt rat and insisted that the full details must accompany the draft of the budget before he would assent to it. This soon generated yet another full blown clash between both arms of government. As President insisted, the details were eventually forwarded to the President. Yet, the details generated its own kind of controversy as unmanageable discrepancies were found. They included outright removal of allocations to certain projects, and appropriation of multi-billion naira for National Assembly bogus constituency projects which, according to the presidency, had no provision in the original proposal, amongst other anomalies. The Presidency advised the leadership of the National Assembly to go back to the drawing board and do the needful for the betterment of Nigerians. While all the controversies and dramas were playing out, the citizens were left in confusion and disappointment as a result of severe hardships that befell them. Power sector nearly collapsed even as fuel queues returned to many cities and towns across the country; electricity supply reduced to 0.000MW while herdsmen embarked on rampage. In the socio-economic confusion too, the Kano market went up in flames, prices of food stuffs skyrocketed even as other difficulties surfaced. Life, as Thomas Hobbes would say, became nasty, brutish and short for many Nigerians. But the president consistently asked Nigerians to remain focused and have faith in his administration’s commitment to reposition the country to a better place. With the President finally signing the budget into law on May 6, the expectations and momentum is back and the business of governance is expected to kick off after long period of stagnation, so that the works of change would probably begin in earnest next week Monday. It is imperative to remind the President that, Nigerians are still anxiously waiting to see improvement in electricity supply across the country, revival of steel companies such as Ajaokuta steel mill and many more. Indeed, Nigerians are expecting to see the availability of easy access to loans from banks for the establishment of small scale businesses across the country. Nigerians are expecting to see the return of contractors on sites in most of the abandoned federal government projects across the country. Such contracts include Okene-Lokoja-Abuja road project which was awarded 10 years ago, and had remained uncompleted for all these while. There is also the second Niger bridge that has become a recurrent campaign trademark in every general election, amongst others. Nigerians want to see massive recruitment of unemployed youths. And vulnerable and extremely poor country men and women are anxiously waiting to hear the first alert of the monthly stipend promised by this administration. And finally, Nigerians want to see the agents of Buhari change roll up there trousers and swing into action of revamping the nation’s infrastructure. So God help them!
A Crude trunkline feeding crude oil to both Warri and Kaduna refineries was among the oil installations hit on Thursday by the Niger Delta militants who have renewed attacks on oil pipelines in the region.
The attack on the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) facility, which was recently repaired, is the second in as many days carried out by a new group of suspected militants in the Niger Delta that has vowed to cripple the oil and gas industry and the backbone of the Nigerian economy.
Also reportedly hit in the latest attack on Thursday night is an oil flow station feeding the Chevron Tank-farm in Warri South-West Government Area, Delta State.
A gas line feeding Lagos and Abuja power plants was also said to have been hit in what appears to be a well-coordinated renewed attack on the oil facilities in the Niger Delta. [myad]
A chieftain of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Rev. Testimony Onifade, has alleged that the superior firearms being used by the herdsmen that had recently launched attacks on communities in the South East and other parts of the country showed that they are being sponsored by some powerful Nigerians.
Onifade, who is a Special Assistant to the CAN Vice President, Rev. Supo Ayokunle, said that seeing many of the herdsmen carrying AK 47 and other sophisticated rifles is enough evidence of the level of their connections with powerful people.
He called on the federal government to arrest the sponsors and bring them to justice, though he was not specific about the identities of such sponsors.
Speaking in Igede Ekiti at the weekend during a Baptist Church of Nigeria special programme held in the town, Onifade said: “What the Fulani herdsmen used to carry are sticks and cutlasses, but today they paraded AK 47. Where did they get it?
“Their actions in recent time were barbaric and wicked. I can read political, tribal and ethnic colourations to the way they acted. Iwant to believe that President Muhammadu Buhari despite being a Fulani man, cannot support such madness and he shouldn’t also keep quiet.
“But if he decided to keep quiet for too long, we in the CAN we call him to order because no ethnic group has monopoly of violence.” [myad]
President Muhammadu Buhari arrives in London on Tuesday to join 50 other world leaders at a landmark international anti-corruption summit called by Prime Minister David Cameron.
The “Anti-Corruption Summit London 2016” will bring together world leaders, business and civil society to agree a package of practical steps to:
expose corruption so there is nowhere to hide
punish the perpetrators and support those affected by corruption
drive out the culture of corruption wherever it exists
put in place infrastructure and tools that can be used by international organizations, countries and national institutions to fight corruption.
In a remarkable recognition of his ongoing war against corruption in his own country, President Buhari will speak twice at this event,first as a keynote speaker at a pre-conference meeting called by the new Commonwealth Secretary-General, Baroness Patricia Scotland and the second for eight minutes allocated to each President or head of government at the main summit, giving the clearest indication that the President’s focus has become a template for the rest of the world.
Recognition apart, the President is not making pretensions about his success and achievements. Knowing the humility with which he goes about his things, he is not marching to London with a Macho image of a fighter who in a true sense of the word pushed back the Boko Haram terrorism and its threat to the nation and confronting equally, embedded corruption like no other regime. Of course these are milestones visible to the naked eye of the international community which have earned the goodwill of the people at home and abroad.
When he goes to London, President Buhari intends to share experiences with other leaders. He is of the strong conviction that increasing globalization has has made it difficult, if not impossible for stand-alone nations to combat corruption; that without global synergies against corruption, nations will fail in their efforts towards economic growth, maintaining security, reducing poverty and protecting the environment for their children. He will, in the light of this seek support for anti-corruption capacity for our national institutions and the citizenship.
As his own contribution, the President has substantially aligned himself with major initiatives enunciated by the convener, Prime Minister David Cameron that seek to increase transparency and governance in several key areas.
He has formulated a Nigerian position on how to end impunity for corruption and ensuring that those involved in grand corruption are brought to justice through the active enforcement of laws and restrictions. Equally in agreement with Cameron, he is making suggestions on ways of empowering those affected by corruption by ensuring that its proceeds are returned to those to those from whom they have been stolen.
President Buhari will also join the world leaders in designing a global architecture and tools that can be used to by international organizations, countries and national institutions to fight corruption.
In an outline by the county’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami (SAN), specific areas of interest to Nigeria which the President will put on the tables include the development of beneficial ownership information related to corporate ownership, procurement, and public contract.
By this, Nigeria will seek the lifting of the veil on corporate ownerships in order to disclose the true owners of a corporate vehicle in contact bids and procurement processes. Beyond this, the corporate ownership profile may be shared with other countries or interested stakeholders.
Already, there is a broad view among the participants that public contracting is a source of public corruption and must be tackled as such. Our officials recommend that contracts within a certain threshold should be published and those behind the companies bidding for the contract should be listed for public scrutiny both at national and state levels.
To achieve this, Nigeria plans the enactment of a regulation that will authorize the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) to obtain information on beneficial ownership of foreign companies that can be held in a different database to be managed by the CAC in Nigeria.
Nigeria will be demanding the strengthening of the supervisory responsibilities of financial and non-financial services regulators and provision of specific training on compliance requirements for these sectors and will seek the establishment of an inter-agency collaboration as a key element in improving the implementation of Financial Action Task Force, FATF standards (such as the money laundering laws, anti-corruption laws, and Financial Intelligence Center Bill).
As part of measures to enhance fiscal transparency which is required in enhancing economic growth, improved GDP and poverty reduction, officers working in budget offices as well as those responsible for approving public spending may henceforth be properly scrutinized, monitored and required to declare assets on a regular basis.
The Nigerian government has in fact set for itself the objective of signing the ‘OPEN GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIP AND OPEN CONTRACTING PARTNERSHIP.
A major issue of interest to this government and a few others is on greater transparency in the extractive industry (oil, gas and solid mineral sectors). The U.K. Government and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD have identified 20 percent of international corruption and bribery as coming for this sector. Nigeria will argue for greater fiscal transparency and and the enforcement of anti-corruption laws to deal with the problem.
The President is expected to give assurances that a lot of work will be done on a set of laws that will improve enforcement of anti-corruption laws. Nigeria has already begun reviewing its anti-corruption laws enacted since 2000 to bring it in compliance with international developments. In addition, the country which has ratified the United Nations Convention Against Corruption UNCAC is currently reviewing the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention for possible ratification. The OECD convention is considered among the stringiest of measures against corruption in corporate governance.
The government of President Buhari has also forwarded the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Bill, 2016 to the National Assembly in Nigeria for enactment into law.
When it is passed, it will enhance mutual assistance and international cooperation between Nigeria and other countries.
The President will also announce that a new Nigeria Financial Intelligence Center Bill has been drafted for this purpose and would soon be forwarded to the National Assembly.
The Nigerian government will also indicate support for the UK proposal on the development of the INTERNATIONAL ANTI-CORRUPTION COORDINATION CENTER. This is to be based in London and will serve as a global forum.
As part of this country’s contributions to the evolution of the global anti-corruption infrastructure, Nigeria will seek support for the hosting of an “International Summit on Assets Recovery ” in 2017 in Abuja and for the establishment and hosting of a “Forum on Assets Recovery in Africa” to be based in Abuja. The country will also seek the support of the UK government for the establishment of an anti-corruption coordination framework at the national level.
Nigeria will be fully embracing UK proposals for the summit on the restriction of the ability of those who have looted public funds from traveling and investing the proceeds of their corruption in developed countries. To this end, the Nigerian government will develop its list of those who have been convicted as well as those already prosecuted in Nigerian courts for grand corruption for the purpose of sharing them with countries that are interested in offering bilateral or multilateral cooperation to Nigeria in the recovery of looted funds.
The Nigerian government is also signaling an early support for the UK proposals on assets recovery which prescribes measures substantially in tandem with a new Proceeds of Crime Bill being drafted and would soon been forwarded by President Buhari to the National Assembly for passage into law.
In addition to the political spotlighting of corruption, the coming together of world leaders is a sign of hope that countries like Nigeria with systems that are lax and compromised can gain from the experience of others in improving their regulatory mechanisms as quickly as possible.
This trip is important for both Nigeria and the international community which reposes a lot of hope on Muhammadu Buhari who is faced with the daunting task of reversing the the socio-economic and political mess in which the previous administration left the country.
In addition to the anti-corruption summit, the visit will also focus on trade and investment between Nigeria and the U.K. President Buhari will welcome British investment in Nigeria.
It is hoped that the bilateral discussions between the Prime Minister and our President will focus on issues of common interest and do everything to possible to take the relationship between the two countries to newer heights.
Garba Shehu is Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity. [myad]
When I learned last year that I would be going to northeastern Nigeria, I was more afraid of what my mother would say than I was of encountering Boko Haram militants.
I broke the news to her over the phone two weeks before I was to leave. I held my breath as I finished telling her about my plans. “You know how I feel about Nigeria,” she said, after a pause, with an exasperated sigh.
While I was growing up, my mother, Grace, rarely talked about her childhood in Nigeria. It’s only in the past few years that I have come to know how she feels about her birth country. She was born in Enugu, a city in the southeastern state of Anambra, to my Yoruba grandmother, Francisca, and my Ghanan grandfather, Fred, who worked in the British civil service. At age 14, my mother fled with her family to Ghana to escape the violence of Nigeria’s brutal Biafra civil conflict, which killed 1 million Nigerians in the late 1960s.
My mother met my father at college in Ghana, and eventually they immigrated to the United States, settling in Dallas. My siblings and I knew my mother’s life was roughly divided in two: “before the war” and “after the war.” But as I was working on a graduate school paper on the Biafra war four years ago, my mother opened up to me about the war. I called to tell her about my paper — and got a burst dam of painful memories in return.
She recalled food and water shortages. Classmates killed in bomb raids. The loyal dog they had to leave behind as the circle of violence tightened around Enugu. How for almost two years they bounced from town to town, living in abandoned homes. Finally, in 1968, my grandfather got the family out on a Red Cross evacuation flight to Accra, Ghana, where my grandmother and relatives still live.
“You know, Karen, we had such a nice life before the war. Grandpa J. was part of the colonial finance ministry, so he was respected. We were like, what you might say, middle class. We had just bought a new house and we were moving our things in, and then the war. . . .” Her voice trailed off. Then she got angry.
“Everything was taken from us. We had to run and only take what we could carry. We had to run to forest areas to hide from shellings. . . . Some people had no food, eating lizards in the bushes!” Later she told me that she sobbed uncontrollably the evening after we talked.
She has never gone back, which may be why I viewed my first trip to Nigeria as a chance for a redemption of sorts. As soon as I landed in Abuja, the capital city, I felt as though I was meeting a grandparent for the first time. The humidity of the air and the smell of the earth reminded me of my trips to visit relatives in Ghana. I was thrilled to finally set foot in my mother’s birthplace, yet I couldn’t help but feel a sense of sadness and resentment — that Nigeria was the grandparent who had failed to protect my mother.
The next day, I flew to Yola, capital of the northeastern Adamawa state. Over several days, I saw the catastrophic toll that the conflict with Boko Haram had taken in the northeast, particularly on women and children. As of April, about 2 million people had been displaced within Nigeria, mostly from Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states. I spent hours at two food distribution sites organized by the American University of Nigeria in Yola, where thousands, mostly women, stood in lines to receive parcels of maize, rice and cooking oil. I spoke to women whose husbands had been killed and whose houses and farms had been destroyed. Despite Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s declaration of a “technical victory” over the group, more than 1,000 Nigerians have been killed by Boko Haram since his inauguration last year.
My mother, a lifelong book lover, has always said that the most painful part of moving from place to place during the war was that she could not go to school. I saw for myself the devastating toll that Boko Haram has taken on education — the schools riddled with bullet holes, some even burned to the ground. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 910 schools have been destroyed. It is estimated that more than 950,000 school-age children have fled the violence, leaving them with little or no access to education. The assault on education in Nigeria’s already poor northeastern region will dampen development there for generations.
Perhaps selfishly, I wish I could tie this story up with a neat little bow, and happily report that, as a result of my trip, my mother is planning to return to Nigeria. She doesn’t think she ever will. “What home would I return to?” she asked me. “I’ve learned that my home is wherever my family is.”
I’ll always feel like I met my mother and grandmother in those groups of displaced women and children in Yola. On this Mother’s Day, I am eternally grateful to my mother for sharing her history with me, despite the pain. “War is in me. It’s a part of my makeup,” my mother likes to say. It’s a part of mine, too.
Karen Attiah is The Washington Post’s Deputy Digital Opinions Editor. [myad]
The first rain in the 2016, which started around 4:30 a.m. and lasted for about one hour today, Saturday, has sent people of Maiduguri, the Borno state capital back to their farms.
Information reaching us indicated that some of the residents were surprised by the early rain, confessing that the early rain this year would encourage them to cultivate crops as soon as possible, unlike in the previous years.
They also saw the early rain as an antidote to reduce the excessive heat being experienced in the state. The residents were being forced to sleep in the open in spite of the security threat brought about by the activities of Boko Haram insurgents.
The residents said that the commencement of the rains would reduce the huge money being spent to buy ice blocks, cold drinks and water to quench the thirsts.
Farmers in Maiduguri metropolis have described the rainfall as “a sign of blessing” and that they would soon mobilize to his farmlands.
“I have been praying for the rains to commence, I can now go back to farm with the hope of making a bumper harvest,” Bulama Bulama, one of the farmers said. [myad]
Members of the Reactionary Club have been saying this about president Buhari that because of his refusal to sign the over- padded 2016 budget, the nation was in disarray. Despite the fact that the federal government rejected the National Assembly approved budgets about three times, the president was still able to sign the 2016 budget into law on 6th May 2016 which still beats the many signing dates of similar national budget, presided over by the past PDP governments. For our records, the following are the dates that the past PDP presidents signed their budgets (Appropriation Bills ) into law, from 2008 to 2016: 2008- April 15 2009- March 10 2010-April 22 2011-May 27 2012-April 13 2013-February 26 2014- May 24 2015-May 19 2016- May 06 Why the fuse about the delay, when this one was signed earlier than the most immediate past? When next the enemies of the government challenge the President on any national issue, kindly ask them how they handled the same matter under their kleptomaniac regime. [myad]
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Tortuous Journey To Budget Signing And Promising Future, By Deen Adavize
It was obvious that immediately after being sworn-in on May 29 last year, as President and Commander-In-Chief of the Nigerian Army, Buhari swung into action not only to assemble his cabinet members, but to work on the 2016 Appropriation Bill.
He subsequently presented the Bill to the joint session of the National Assembly on December 22nd last year.
The President tagged the Bill: “Budget of Change,” signalling what could be a promising future for Nigeria; the Nigeria that was gradually sliding into economic morass, occasioned by decades of leadership failure, monumental corruption and mismanagement of the nation’s wealth by few powerful men and women around the corridors of power.
The president, while presenting the budget on the floor of the joint National Assembly, promised a full implementation of the Bill when passed, which is a departure from the hitherto culture of lack of proper implementation of the budget.
The leadership of the National Assembly promptly reacted to the zeal by which the President presented the budget by expressing readiness to do a thorough and speedy job to ensure its quick passage, even as they pledged their unwavering support to the President’s vision to transform the nation’s economy and rid the country of corruption and impunity.
Unfortunately however, a few days after the presentation of the Buhari’s “Budget of Change,” the nation’s media came out with breaking news that the budget had disappeared from the National Assembly. Many Nigerians were sceptical about what was seen as a bizarre revelation until when the two arms of government, (Executive and legislature) began their dramatic accusations and counter accusations.
From the disappearance, the story changed to Budget padding, which later snowballed into a new term of “budget cabal;” a new lexicon in the nation political history.
While the executive accused the legislature of padding the budget, the legislature in turn accused the executive of same and the nation was left in the state of confusion and hopelessness.
The cross-firing led the President to describe the situation as embarrassing for his government even as he promised to deal decisively with all those involved in the so called budget padding.
A week after the President expressed shock over the controversies that trailed the presentation of the Appropriation Bill, a major shake-up was made in the ministry of budget and national planning, as well as in other relevant agencies.
And after all the dramatic displays around the politics of budget padding between the two arms of government, on March 23, this year, the National Assembly passed the budget with unprecedented reduction in the original (executive) estimate and sent it to the President for assent without details. The President of course, smelt rat and insisted that the full details must accompany the draft of the budget before he would assent to it.
This soon generated yet another full blown clash between both arms of government. As President insisted, the details were eventually forwarded to the President. Yet, the details generated its own kind of controversy as unmanageable discrepancies were found. They included outright removal of allocations to certain projects, and appropriation of multi-billion naira for National Assembly bogus constituency projects which, according to the presidency, had no provision in the original proposal, amongst other anomalies.
The Presidency advised the leadership of the National Assembly to go back to the drawing board and do the needful for the betterment of Nigerians.
While all the controversies and dramas were playing out, the citizens were left in confusion and disappointment as a result of severe hardships that befell them.
Power sector nearly collapsed even as fuel queues returned to many cities and towns across the country; electricity supply reduced to 0.000MW while herdsmen embarked on rampage. In the socio-economic confusion too, the Kano market went up in flames, prices of food stuffs skyrocketed even as other difficulties surfaced.
Life, as Thomas Hobbes would say, became nasty, brutish and short for many Nigerians. But the president consistently asked Nigerians to remain focused and have faith in his administration’s commitment to reposition the country to a better place.
With the President finally signing the budget into law on May 6, the expectations and momentum is back and the business of governance is expected to kick off after long period of stagnation, so that the works of change would probably begin in earnest next week Monday.
It is imperative to remind the President that, Nigerians are still anxiously waiting to see improvement in electricity supply across the country, revival of steel companies such as Ajaokuta steel mill and many more.
Indeed, Nigerians are expecting to see the availability of easy access to loans from banks for the establishment of small scale businesses across the country. Nigerians are expecting to see the return of contractors on sites in most of the abandoned federal government projects across the country. Such contracts include Okene-Lokoja-Abuja road project which was awarded 10 years ago, and had remained uncompleted for all these while. There is also the second Niger bridge that has become a recurrent campaign trademark in every general election, amongst others.
Nigerians want to see massive recruitment of unemployed youths. And vulnerable and extremely poor country men and women are anxiously waiting to hear the first alert of the monthly stipend promised by this administration. And finally, Nigerians want to see the agents of Buhari change roll up there trousers and swing into action of revamping the nation’s infrastructure.
So God help them!
deenadavize@gmail.com