Scorecard: APC administration recorded massive infrastructural achievements – Works Minister
Aanya Igomu, Abuja
Despite meager resources, the All Progressives Congress, APC administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari has taken deliberate policy decisions which have led to massive infrastructure projects development in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, stated this at the APC Pre-Convention Policy Conference organised by the party’s Pre-Convention Sub-Committee.
The conference’s objective was to discuss the current and future policy direction of the APC.
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INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT
The minister who explained that massive infrastructure development was one thing that made the APC administration stand out added that they were severe challenges that the party could overcome.
“When we came in, 18 billion naira was our budget for the Ministry of Works. For all Nigeria’s roads. That was less than the budget of my state in 2015.
“This tells you the attitude of the preceding government towards infrastructure. So if you budget N18b for roads and a new government that has less, is budgeting 500 billion naira for the same roads, are those two parties the same?
“We are confronting the significant problems of infrastructure—Lagos- Ibadan expressway, Second Niger Bridge, Boro -Bonny Apapa, Abuja-Kaduna, etc.
“All of these roads seem to define solutions. Buhari APC-led government is confronting them in collaboration with state governors, and many of them will complete this year or before the end of this administration,” Fashola said.
EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Similarly, the Ekiti State governor and Co-Chairman of the Pre-Convention Committee, Kayode Fayemi, while saying APC administration has differentiated itself from the previous administration, incited the education development he has achieved in his state.
“That is why I told you that there is a massive difference between the PDP and APC. That’s why I hate to hear that all party are the same.
“I can tell you with our own experience in Ekiti, and you may also see that in other States where we (APC) are in control.
“Coming into office in 2018, talking specifically about Ekiti State, in fact, let me go back to 2014 when I left, Ekiti had the lowest out-of-school children percentage in the entire country.
“But by the time I returned in 2018, the policies that handled us to achieve that were also policies that broadly speaking were what our government focused on at the national level: free and compulsory education, extended beyond the universal primary education program that starts at JSS3 to SS3.
“It also ensures that our children can go to school within a 2km range from their place of residence and enforcing the child right act in terms of children being found on the street trading at hours when they should be in school.”
He reiterated that this would make more caregivers accountable for their children’s educational and personal well-being. “It helps to hold the parents or guardians accountable for such policies that helped us increase the enrollment rate. But by the time we came back in 2018, we had dropped back to the highest out-of-school children in the South-west zone by 2018,” Fayemi explained.
INSECURITY IN THE NORTHEAST
In his address, the Co-Chairman of the Pre-Convention Committee and Governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum, affirmed that insecurity in the Northeast has improved compared to what was gotten before.
Governor Zulum however noted that more efforts need to be made to get all displaced people by the insurgency resettled.
SOCIAL INVESTMENT PROGRAM
Meanwhile, the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, said the APC government social investment program is yielding good results as Nigeria has emerged the nation with the fastest growing social investment program in the world.
Ms. Ahmed also disclosed that Nigeria’s economy is now fully diversified because of different economic intervention strategies introduced by the Buhari-led APC government.
“We have grown our revenues and moved away from dependency from oil revenues to non-oil.
“So while we started with oil revenue being about seventy percent of our budget now, we are at the point when non-oil revenues is five percent of our budget fully diversified today.
“Our GDP from the oil sector is 8 percent which means 92 percent of the economy is the non-oil sector. What we have to do is actually deepen diversification, expand and grow the individual sectors to do more.
“Because the capacity is there, of course, we have a lot of challenges. What keeps me awake is revenue.”
She spoke passionately about the strategic program designed to grow revenue. “Domestic Revenue mobilization is a key focus in the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning and we set out by designing a programme that we call this Strategic Revenue Growth Initiative. Through this initiative, we have been able to grow on our revenues and make it a major source of income,” the minister stated.
E/Suzan O.
