Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has said in spite of the huge challenges inherited by the current
Administration, President Muhammadu Buhari has steered the country in
the right direction and returned the economy to the path of
sustainable growth.
The Minister made the remarks in Abuja on Friday when he received a
delegation from the African Union Development Agency-New Partnership
for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD), which is in the country for the
second peer review.
“We came into government in 2015 and by the time we came to
government, three things happened, the impact of which we did not
know. The first is that by the time we assumed office in 2015, a huge
part of the North East was under the effective occupation of Boko
Haram.
“When we came in in 2015, the economy had virtually collapsed. Oil prices crashed from a high of about $120 per barrel to about $28 a barrel. Production went from about 2.1 million barrels per day to
about half a million barrels a day. These were the challenges we faced
on day one when we came in,” he said.
Mohammed, therefore, urged the AUDA-NEPAD to always consider the
peculiar challenges of a country while making conclusions on the
governance structure for the peer review.
“While we can have some basic tenets of governance, governance is a
bit peculiar to the locality, and the kind of challenges we face will
determine to a large extent the mechanism we are going to use to
resolve them.
“I look at Nigeria as an extremely interesting project, especially in
the last six years. I think the kind of challenges we faced as a
government coming in in 2015 till today will challenge the most
resourceful persons,” he said.
The Minister hailed the governance style of Buhari which, he
said, is driven by experience, wisdom, tolerance, patience and listening to all
shades of opinion in his effort to chart a new course for the country
that has been plagued by numerous challenges.
While speaking on the economy, he said the President has diversified
the economy as oil is no longer the driving force behind economic
growth.
“In the area of economy, I am proud to say that we are not just in the
process of diversifying the economy, we have diversified our economy
because the last report (of the National Bureau of Statistics) showed
that while the non-oil economy did very well, the oil-related economy
did poorly.
“That after two quarters of recession, we were able to record 5.01%
growth in GDP was not at all based on the oil economy but on the
non-oil economy,” Alhaji Mohammed said.
He said the Federal Government has scaled up the fight against
insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and other forms of criminality in the
country.
The Minister also highlighted the contributions of the Creative
Industry to the growth of the economy, saying apart from agriculture,
the sector creates the highest number of jobs, especially for women
and the youth.
He also commended Mr. President’s foresight in the fight against
COVID-19, and disclosed that Nigeria is targeting about 90 million
doses of COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year.
In her remarks, the National Coordinator of NEPAD, Princess Gloria
Akobundu, said the AU Development Agency is in the country to assess
the implementation of the National Programme of Action arising from
the first peer review conducted in 2008.
She said so far, Nigeria has consolidated democracy, scaled up the
provision of infrastructure and is in the process of attaining
self-sufficiency in food production through massive investment in
agriculture.
