The Honourable Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaj Lai Mohammed, has said that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar’s economic blueprint is a crude attempt at copying all what the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has done, especially in the areas of job creation, infrastructure financing, relationship with the private sector, rejuvenation of the power sector, poverty reduction, debt management and the overall management of the economy.
However, Lai explained that it is shocking that an opposition that has condemned all that the Administration has done would turn around to weave its so-called Economic Blueprint around the same things that are currently being done by the same Administration.
He further added that the press conference is aimed at exposing the hypocrisy inherent in an opposition that condemns an Administration while also showcasing a blueprint that is nothing but a poor version of what’s on ground.
‘Atiku also spoke on poverty reduction, which he said would be the ‘centrepiece of our economic development agenda’. Could it be that His Excellency has not heard about our National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), the unprecedented programme that is directly and indirectly impacting the lives of poor Nigerians and creating jobs,especially for the youths, through four clusters, namely: the N-Power Programme, the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), the National Home-Grown School Feeding System (NHGSFP) and the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Programme.’
‘’From 2016 to date, the NSIP, which has received commendation from many international agencies, has empowered 1 million youths while an additional 500,000 are undergoing various training under the N-Power programme; enrolled 1,632,480 households in the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme and gave productive cash grants of N150,000 each to 4,234 people.’’
‘’The NSIP has also stimulated unprecedented enrolments in public primary schools through the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme that is feeding 9.8 million children, while there are 2,424,253 beneficiaries of the GEEP loans under TraderMoni, MarketMoni and FarmerMoni, in addition to a total of 1,142,783 individuals who have registered to benefit from GEEP 2.0 under the three loan products. These programmes represent a practical demonstration of the progressive achievement of the President’s target of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by 2030.’’
The minister further added that the Administration has achieved credible things in all sectors and the best the opposition could do is to seek to copy what the Administration has been doing, while the opposition – in its desperation to get power – has continued to deny and derogate the Administration’s achievements.
Lai explained that, “For the record, there is nothing we have said today on the achievements of this Administration that we haven’t said before. No amount of deceit, misrepresentation,scaremongering, distortion of facts or derogation can subtract from the visible achievements of the Buhari Administration.
Finally, the minister noted that, ’ the administration has engaged in massive infrastructure development despite paucity of resources, and introduced the most expansive and effective poverty reduction and job creation policy in the history of this country, while re-equipping the military to tackle daunting security challenges instead of resorting to the use of mercenaries, and is moving the nation from darkness to light by embarking on the most-ambitious electricity project yet borrowing to rebuild rather than for consumption should not be denigrated by an opposition that lacks originality, and an opposition that is aping a government it derides.’’
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