On May 29 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari took over the leadership of the most populous and powerful African nation, Nigeria.
As the Muhammadu Buhari administration clocks six years today, May 29, 2021, this milestone affords the opportunity to reflect, and recount the impact that has been made and is still being made on different sectors of our national life.
From infrastructure, to finance, education, healthcare, sports, anti-corruption, human development, housing, oil and gas, foreign relations, and many others, the Administration is recording giant strides, enough to make Nigerians proud.
A sectoral breakdown of the achievements recorded by the administration in six years, shows that in the infrastructure sector for instance, the President gave approval, in 2020, for the establishment of InfraCo Plc, a world class infrastructure development vehicle, wholly focused on Nigeria, with combined debt and equity take-off capital of N15 trillion, and managed by an independent infrastructure fund manager.
Also in the year 2020, the Buhari administration established a Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF), with more than $1 Billion in funding so far.
Similarly, the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) has seen total additional inflows from the Government of around US$2 billion under the Buhari Administration – since the original US$1 billion, which the Fund kicked off with in 2012. The launch of the Nigeria Innovation Fund, by the NSIA, to address investment opportunities in the domestic technology sector: data networking, datacenters, software, Agri-tech, Bio-tech, etc. is also among what the President has done.
Still under infrastructure, work on the the 156km Lagos-Ibadan Standard Gauge Rail is nearing completion; 327km Itakpe-Warri Standard Gauge Rail has completed and commissioned, 33 years after construction began; Abuja Light Rail has also been completed since 2018.
The Groundbreaking for the construction of Kano-Maradi Standard Gauge Rail and revamp of Port-Harcourt-Maiduguri Narrow Gauge Rail has been done while financing negotiations are ongoing for the Ibadan-Kano Standard Gauge Rail project.
Roads
The Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) is currently investing over a billion dollars in three flagship projects: Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Second Niger Bridge, Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano Expressway.
The Nigerian leader had since signed Executive Order 7, which is mobilizing private investment into the development of key roads and bridges like Bodo-Bonny in Rivers and Apapa-Oshodi-Oworonshoki-Ojota in Lagos
The Highway Development and Management Initiative (HDMI), a public-private partnership program to mobilize, in its first Phase, over a Trillion Naira in private investment into the development and maintenance of 12 Roads, amounting to 1,963km in length is also in place doing the needful, in order to further improve roads network cross the country. While more than 360 billion Naira worth of Sukuk Bonds raised since 2017 for dozens of critical road projects across all six geopolitical zones is also in place.
In the air transportation sub-sector, the Buhari administration has also completed work on new Terminals for the International Airports in Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt. While new Runways have been built for Abuja and Enugu International Airports.
Power Sector
As part of its diversification scheme, the government has since launched an Energizing Education Programme, which takes clean and reliable energy (Solar and Gas) to Federal Universities and Teaching Hospitals across the country. Four of such Universities already have theirs completed and commissioned. They include, Bayero University Kano, Alex Ekweme Federal University Ebonyi, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Bauchi and the Federal University of Petroleum Resources Delta while others are ongoing.
A similar programme of taking clean and reliable energy (Solar and Gas) to markets was introduced across the country. Completed ones include those of Sabon-Gari Market in Kano, Ariaria Market in Aba, and Sura Shopping Complex in Lagos.
The National Mass Metering Programme; a nationwide roll-out of electricity meters to all on-grid consumers, was launched in August 2020. The Central Bank of Nigeria is providing 60 billion Naira for the first phase, with a target of 1 million meter installations. So far, more than 500,000 meters have been delivered to the Distribution Companies (Discos,) and more than 280,000 installed.
Another programme known as “Solar Power Naija” was launched in April 2021 to deliver 5 million off-grid solar connections to Nigerian households. The program is expected to generate an additional N7 billion increase in tax revenues per annum and $10 million in annual import substitution. In May 2021, the Rural Electrification Agency announced the planned deployment of solar-powered grids to 200 Primary Health Centres (PHC) and 104 Unity Schools nationwide.
There is also the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI), also known as Siemens Power Program, in traduced by the Buhari administration. This is a Government-to-Government initiative involving the Governments of Nigeria and Germany, and Siemens AG of Germany, to upgrade and modernize Nigeria’s electricity grid. Contract for the pre-engineering phase of the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI) was signed in February 2021, following the 2020 approval for the payment of the Nigerian government’s counterpart funding for that phase.
Housing Sector
The Family Homes Fund Limited (FHFL), incorporated by the Federal Government of Nigeria in September 2016, is the implementing agency for the Buhari Administration’s National Social Housing scheme. More than two thousand hectares of land with titled documents have been given by 24 States for the Buhari administration’s Social Housing programme, with the capacity to accommodate about 65,000 new homes.
Under the National Social Housing programme, Nigerians will be given at least a 15-year period with a monthly payment at 6 percent interest rate, to pay for each housing unit. The Central Bank of Nigeria is providing a N200 Billion financing facility, with a guarantee by the government.
Oil and Gas
The Buhari Administration has declared this decade the “Decade of Gas.” It has performed the ground-breaking on 614km Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano Gas Project. It has also achieved the successful completion of Nigeria’s first Marginal Field Bid Round in almost 20 years, expected to raise in excess of half a billion dollars, and open up a new vista of investment in oil and gas.
Nigeria and Morocco have in 2021 signed an agreement to develop a US$1.4 billion multipurpose industrial platform (Ammonia and Di-Ammonium Phosphate production plants) that will utilize Nigerian gas and Moroccan phosphate to produce 750,000 tons of ammonia and 1 million tons of phosphate fertilizers annually by 2025. It will be located in Ikot-Abasi, Akwa-Ibom State.
The government has also established a $350m Nigerian Content Intervention Fund, to finance manufacturing, contracts and assets in the oil and gas industry
The ANOH gas processing plant, with a processing capacity of 300 million standard cubic feet of gas, in Imo State has since come on board. It is a Joint Venture between Seplat Petroleum Development Company and the Nigerian Gas Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). It also has the potential to deliver 1,200MW of power when completed.
Comprehensive Rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refinery (PHRC). Sign-off Ceremony of Engineering, Procurement & Construction (EPC) Contract held in April 2021, marking the commencement of site handover and full mobilization to site.
Agriculture
The Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) of the Central Bank of Nigeria, launched by President Muhammadu Buhari on November 17, 2015, has made more than 300 billion Naira to more than 3.1 million smallholder farmers of 21 different commodities (including Rice, Wheat, Maize, Cotton, Cassava, Poultry, Soy Beans, Groundnut, Fish), cultivating over 3.8 million hectares of farmland.
The Presidential Fertilizer Initiative was launched as a government-to-government partnership between the Nigerian and Moroccan Governments, in December 2016. The Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI) has so far produced 12million 50kg bags of NPK 20:10:10 equivalent in 2020, bringing total production since inception to over 30 million 50kg bags equivalent; and number of participating blending plants increased to 44 from three at inception.
The Buhari administration has also introduced a Special-Agro Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) Programme; partnership between The Nigerian government and the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, and other stakeholders including the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and Bank of Industry.
Under the SAPZ programme, agro-processing centers will be established across the country. The agro-processing centers will be provided with basic infrastructure such as water, electricity and roads as well as facilities for skills training. Seven (7) States and the FCT selected for the pilot phase, due to commence 2021. The pilot states include Ogun, Oyo, Imo, Cross River, Kano, Kaduna, Kwara.
Poverty Alleviation
In 2016, President Buhari launched the National Social Investment Programme, currently the largest such programme in Africa and one of the largest in the world. Currently, the National Social Register of poor and vulnerable Nigerians (NSR) has 32.6 million persons from more than 7 million poor and vulnerable households, identified across 708 local government areas, 8,723 wards and 86,610 communities across the 36 States of the country and the FCT.
From this number, 1.6 million poor and vulnerable households (comprising more than 8 million individuals, in 45,744 communities from 5,483 Wards of 557 LGAs in 35 states and the FCT are currently benefiting from the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program, which pays a bimonthly stipend of N10,000 per household.
In January 2019, President Buhari launched Nigeria’s Micro-Pension Scheme – which allows self-employed persons and persons working in organisations with less than 3 employees to save for the provision of pension at retirement or incapacitation.
The Buhari Administration’s Survival Fund has provided its grants (Payroll Support, Artisan and Transport Sector grants, and General MSME grants) to more than 800,000 beneficiaries, since the last quarter of 2020. It has also provided free business registration to more than 200,000 MSMEs across the country.
Education and Health
Since assuming office, the Buhari Administration has committed more than N1.7 trillion of capital intervention to Nigeria’s tertiary institutions, through various means, including TETFund – with the universities taking the lion share of the total amount. The Federal Government has disbursed more than 170 billion Naira in UBE Matching Grants to States and the FCT since 2015, 8 billion Naira in Special Education Grant to States and private providers of Special Education, and 34 billion Naira from the Teachers Professional Development Fund to States and the FCT.
The government also launch of the Alternate School Programme (ASP), designed to ensure that every out-of-school child in Nigeria gains access to quality basic education, irrespective of social, cultural or economic circumstance, in line with the aspirations of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG-4).
The country has witnessed a reduction in number of out-of-school children, by 3,247,590, as at 31st December, 2020, achieved through a World-Bank financed program known as ‘Better Education Service Delivery for All’ (BESDA). 1,792,833 of that number achieved through formal schools while 1,454,757 are through non-formal interventions such as Almajiri, Girl-Child, Nomadic/Migrant and IDPs Education).
At least $2.5 million disbursed to each State of the Federation and the FCT, under the Saving One Million Lives (SOML) initiative, to improve health outcomes.
The Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) has been introduced for the first time since the National Health Act was passed in 2014, the Federal Government in 2018 began including the 1% minimum portion of the Consolidated Revenue Fund – amounting to 55 billion Naira in 2018 – to fund the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF). The Fund is designed to deliver a guaranteed set health services to all Nigerians, through the national network of Primary Health Care centers.
The government has also achieved the enabling legislation for the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC), for the first time since it was founded in 2011. President Buhari approved a grant of 5billion Naira for the NCDC in March 2020, as part of the response to the Coronavirus pandemic.
A number of key Federal Hospitals across the country are being upgraded to effectively manage cancer and other major health challenges. Cancer Radiotherapy machines and other equipment are being provided to these hospitals. The National Hospital in Abuja has already received two LINAC (cancer treatment) machines.
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