The Director-General of the Progressives Governors Forum (PGF), Mr Salihu Lukman, has tasked Nigerian politicians on the need to make political arguments based on evidence and facts rather than opinions.
The PGF DG said this in a press statement in reaction to Professor Attahiru Jega’s comments that Nigeria’s governing party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP have “failed to engender good governance and development in the country.”
Mr Lukman noted that Mr Jega’s statement was a mere opinion and had no fact or evidence.
He added that the reactions of the APC National Caretaker Secretary, Senator John Akpanudoedehe and that of the PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan to Prof. Jega’s statement were also without facts.
“Somehow, both responses from the two officials of the PDP and APC failed to disproof Prof. Jega’s declaration that PDP and APC have failed Nigerians.
“A clear demonstration of the problem of one-dimensional politics, which is just about opinion and even when there is evidence to prove otherwise, individual opinion of leaders, which was what the responses of both Mr Ologbondiyan and Sen. Akpanudoedehe represent, will instead be the reference.
“The responses from Mr Ologbondiyan and Sen. Akpanudoedehe, if allowed to stand can only strengthen the argument that both PDP and APC are the same, which is not correct.
“The question of whether PDP and APC are the same and have all failed Nigerians should therefore be proven beyond the opinion of anybody, including the responses of Mr Ologbondiyan and Sen. Akpanudoedehe. “Irrespective of whether it is PDP, APC or any other party for that matter, performances of parties when elected to manage governments must go beyond opinions,” Lukman said.
He further argued that the APC is nothing like the PDP because the APC government has achieved milestones in the areas of social investments programmes, Infrastructure development and agriculture.
Social Investment Programme
Mr Lukman noted that since emerging as the governing party in 2015, APC Federal Government has been implementing National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), which according to him, is far more than what any government in the past has done.
“Now elevated to a ministerial status, which is the initiative of President Buhari, it is founded on four pillars of N-Power, Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), Home Grown School Feeding and Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP).
“With the goal of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty, millions of poor Nigerians are benefiting from these initiatives,” he said.
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Infrastructure
The PGF DG also stated that when President Muhammadu Buhari administration assumed office in 2015, the total budget for Federal Roads by the outgoing PDP government of former President Goodluck Jonathan was 18 billion Naira, which is only about 25% of the Lagos State roads budget for that year.
“The persistent skeletal funding translated to abandoned or slow-moving road projects across the country. APC administration’s first priorities were to increase the amount of funding available for road projects, while also ensuring the resumption of work on abandoned projects. In 2016, the roads budget went up to 260 billion Naira, for which about 200 billion Naira was released,” he added.
Agriculture
According to Lukman, some of the specific initiatives of the APC led government of President Buhari in the agricultural sector include the National Food Security Council (NFSC), Agriculture for Food and Jobs Plan (AFJP), National Livestock Transformation Plan, The Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP), The Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI), and Creation of an Enabling Environment.
“Specifically, the ABP for instance, implemented by the Central Bank of Nigeria, since 2015, provided 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), across Nigeria, successfully cultivating over 3.8 million hectares of farmland,” Lukman said.
While pointing out some situations he termed as failures of the PDP government such as corruption and insecurity, the PGF DG called on the PDP to present evidence of its successes when it was in government for 16 years.
Mr Lukman emphasised the need for Nigerian politicians to be more tolerant of criticism adding that the intolerance for criticism has led to uncouth utterances by some politicians.
Zainab Sa’id
