Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has been able to do much more for the Nigerian people compared to previous administrations when oil prices were above $100, and yet so little was done.
Osinbajo stated this in a release issued by his Senior Special Assistant, Laolu Akande on Sunday titled: Why we are different from the past government.
He said in the past, public resources were shared by a gang of looters who found protection within government, adding that facts are already out, and that more of such information would soon be released.
According to Osinbajo, despite the fall in the revenues accruing to the government, the current administration set out a social Investment Programme that currently is providing, under one of the clusters, the National Homegrown School Feeding, providing one free meal a day to 7.6 million pupils across 24 States in the Nation.
He said the N-Power, another of such programme, is designed to hire half a million otherwise unemployed Nigerian graduates. “We have done 200,000 to date who are engaged in their local communities and receiving 30,000 per month stipend, 200,000 of them. They have a tablet that they can work with, which also gives them exposure and more skills.”
“Look at the micro-credit programme, where we have about 300,000 soft loans that have been written; interest free loans to artisans, market women and men, between N10,000 and N100,000 have been given to over 300,000 people and we are hoping to do a million. We are spending the resources of this country on the people of this country.”
“We are spending billions of Naira on the Social Investment Programme. We have spent already, 195 billion Naira in the last 2 years and we are doing it at a time when the income of this country is declining.”
Prof Osinbajo said the current administration has also revitalized moribund fertilizer plants, thereby making it more affordable for farmers.
He said the production of rice has also improved drastically. “The people in the industry, the Farmers Association, the people in the business have said that when we came in there were 5.8million farmers but today there are about 12million rice farmers.”
In the area of infrastructural development, Osinbajo said the present administration has spent more than any administration in the past, saying it has spent about N1.3 trillion in the 2017 budget alone.
“We are ensuring that at least 30% of the National income is being spent on capital expenditure. At a time when Nigeria was making more than 100 dollars per barrel on oil, they were spending less than 10% on capital expenditure.”
“There is a huge infrastructural deficit that we are trying to fix, we are building roads that have been in the books for years; the East West Road, the 2nd Nigeria Bridge, the Lagos Ibadan express way. All of these are now alive because you have a leadership that is not corrupt.”
“Even in Power, our capacity to generate has now increased, it has jumped from about 4000mw to 7000mw. The average of transmittable power is about 4000. When we came in it was about 1800, to 2000. These are verifiable facts and we are going to do much more.”
Vice President Osinbajo said Nigerians cannot be fooled by the calculated attempt befuddle the issues, deny and deflect the weighty allegations and the hard facts of grand corruption and crass stealing that went on under the past administration.