May 29: FG to mark Buhari’s 2 years in office

The Federal Government said on May 29, it is going to mark President Muhammadu Buhari’s two years in office as it has a ‘good story to tell Nigerians.’

Information Minister Lai Mohammed told State House reporters after Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council meeting that the government was proud of its achievements in the last two years, saying it had made “tremendous progress.”

He said; “We’ve been able to restructure the economy on a very sound footing, we’ve succeeded in not just looking for quick fixes, but we are addressing the fundamental issues of our economy, which is basically that we are moving away from relying solely on oil to other areas like agriculture, solid minerals and the rest.

“But more importantly in the area of the economy is that for the first time, our emphasis is now more on infrastructure and capital projects rather than on recurrent. And in the area of fighting insecurity and the criminality in the Northeast, we have a good story to tell. In the area of fighting corruption, we have a good story to tell, in agriculture, we have a good story to tell.

“Before the Presidential Initiative on Fertilizer, what we had was that we were importing and subsidizing fertilizer and scarce foreign exchange was going to fertilizer subsidy.

“Today, with the presidential initiative on fertilizer, we now take phosphate and potassium from Morocco and Europe and we now blend it locally in Nigeria here. And with that, we are cutting the cost of fertilizer by 33 percent. Not that alone, we’ve been able to revive 11 blending plants. Before now, only five blending plants were working at 10 percent capacity, and we saved about $100 million in foreign exchange and about N60 million in budgetary provision.

“In the area of power, we have signed 13 power purchase agreements with 13 solar companies. And that is going to add at least 1gw to the national grid. So, we have a good story to tell Nigerians and I think that is what they want to hear.”