It’s Irresponsible to Be Reckless on the President’s Health Status
65-year-old Alhaji Lai Mohammed is the Minister of Information and Culture. A 1975 graduate of French from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Mohammed later got his law degrees from the University of Lagos, after which he co-founded the legal firm of Ed
Recently, the APC-led federal government marked two years in power. It’s a government that rose to power on the strength of its promise to bring about change that will impact the lives of the people positively. This government has been in power for two years now but many Nigerians believe they are worse off than they were under the PDP government, especially in terms of cost of living. How would you react to that?
The truth of the matter is that it is impossible to know what situation we would have been today if APC had not come to power. But I can assure you that if it had been business as usual and APC had not come to power, it would probably have been much worse because we met an economy that was on the brink of total collapse. And what are the indices of an economy that is on the brink of collapse? An economy where there is no infrastructure, an economy where there is no savings to fall back on, an economy which is built around one single product, an economy where corruption was rampant, where there was no accountability, where there was impunity and where there was no discipline; an economy that puts more emphasis on consumption than production. This was the economy we inherited.
That we are in recession, it was bound to happen, the indices were there clearly. An economy where the price of the single most important commodity crashed from about $114 to under $50. So,
given that scenario whoever came into government will need to do a yeoman’s job to pull that economy out. And like I said this morning on another programme, it is like if a house is gutted by fire and people there escaped, you need to bring down the whole house because even standing there (in that state) it can be a danger to the inhabitants and to the neighbours. You need to bring down the whole house and then start rebuilding it from scratch. And that was exactly what we did. So, some of the hardship, including high cost of living, is a result of this.
But we are not lamenting, we’re not a government of lamentation. We are a government that can actually say, two years on what have we achieved? And we have a scorecard that government should be proud of. For instance, in the first quarter of 2016, 29 sub-sectors of the economy were under recession. But today, we have almost halved that, only 16 of those sub sectors of the economy are still under recession and we’re working on them. In the first quarter of 2016, the manufacturing sector recorded a negative growth of seven per cent, by the first quarter of 2017 the same sector has got a positive growth of 1.36 per cent. To show that the emphasis we have put on infrastructure, agriculture and mining is working, and that is why today mining is growing at seven per cent, agriculture is growing at 4.1 per cent. The truth of the matter is that we needed to restructure the economy in a manner that it will no longer depend on one product and when you look at what we’ve done in the last two years, especially in the last budget cycle, we’ve done what has never been done in the history of the country before. Look at the 2016 budget, which was expansionary on its own, we devoted 30 per cent to infrastructure, into capital projects alone; the highest before then was 16 per cent, and in the 2016 budget cycle we released N1.2 trillion for capital projects. The only way that you can diversify your economy is by investing in infrastructure; today as I speak with you, construction of roads are going on all over Nigeria and for you to see the difference between what we did and what was been done before, I will just give you some figures. In 2015, the federal government spent N18 billion on fixing roads all over Nigeria, in the 2016/17 budget cycle, we spent N260 billion on roads. In power, in 2015, the government only spent N5 billion on that sector, this year we have spent N99 billion on the sector. In 2015, in housing, it was only N1.8 billion that was spent in that sector, this year we have spent N70 billion on it. To show our singular commitment to infrastructure we have awarded the contract and started work on the standard gauge of the railway between Lagos and Ibadan. Not only awarding the contract, we have started work, in earnest, talking to General Electric that is leading a consortium to manage the 3500 narrow gauge rail line from Lagos to Kano, so that we can start using them for transporting goods and services and passengers, and in line with the agreement GE is going to supply 20 locomotives and 500 wagons and coaches. Further to showing our commitment to infrastructure, we have signed 13 Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) with 13 solar power companies, which is going to add another 1000MW of power to the national grid. We have intervened in the liquidity problem which has been affecting the industry, where the gas producer are not being paid and where they’re not being paid, the generating companies cannot generate power and that was why we put in place the payment assurance programme whereby we guarantee that if you supply gas we will guarantee your payment; and we’ve put aside N401 billion for this. And, of course, we have the Energy Sector Plan which has been endorsed by the World Bank. In addition the Ministry of Water Resources is trying to use three dams to get us another 1000MW of power. The NNPC is also trying to get us 2500MW of power.
People must understand that with the power situation we met on ground was abysmal. On 29th of May 2015, the entire generation was 2690MW, by February 2016 we had grown this figure to 5040MW before the unfortunate militant actions that destroyed the Forcados export line and other lines. As we speak today, in that area, over 1000MW has been decommissioned, so we have to look elsewhere to open up and as we speak today, we are between 3800 and 4000MW of power.
In agriculture, between the Anchor Borrowers Programme of the CBN and the Agric Ministry, we’ve been able to bring about a rice revolution and a good example was the collaboration between Lagos State and Kebbi State which resulted in the Lakeb Rice Project. Today as we speak, yield per hectare has increased from two tonnes to seven tonnes because of the involvement of the Ministry of Agriculture. We’ve been able to eliminate subsidy in the fertiliser project because what we do now is, we get discounted phosphate from Morocco, we mix it with local urea and by that we’re saving 200millions of dollars in foreign exchange and about N60billion in budgetary provision; plus the fact that we’ve been able to cut down about 30 per cent in the cost of fertilisers to farmers. This is in addition to the rice mills, palm oil mills that the federal government has made available.
So, really, when people say the cost of living has gone up, it is true. It is not as if we’re folding our hands, it is precisely because we know that the prices of things has gone up that we embarked on one of the most ambitious programmes which is the Special Intervention Programme through which we have been able to employ 200,000 unemployed graduates; been able to provide, under our home grown school feeding programme, we’re now feeding over 1100 pupils in over nine states all over Nigeria and that is going to increase. We have served free meals in the process, we’ve employed 12,000 cooks in the process and under our conditional cash transfer to the most critical vulnerable Nigerians, today over 27,000 Nigerians received stipends of N25,000 every month. Through our government entrepreneur programme, we’ve given out 57,000 interest free loans to market women, men and artisans.
So, yes it is true that the cost of living has gone up but it was bound to happen and we are not folding our hands, we are doing everything possible to bring it down. But until you diversify your economy you can’t bring it down; and we are looking at how we can intervene, probably in the area of transportation; subsidized transportation.
Nigerians have forgotten that before now, there used to be subsidy in petroleum products and trillions of naira used to be spent on that, which is now being used in other areas. They have forgotten too that whenever we’re approaching Christmas, Sallah or Easter, there will be long queues at petrol stations, all of that have disappeared. So these are some of the things that government is doing and I can assure you that gradually the cost of living shall be brought down.
Many believe that had the APC government hit the ground running, even though we had a drop in the price of oil, we wouldn’t have been in this recession; they point to the fact that it took about five to six months to even constitute the cabinet and that about 2000 political appointments, board appointments and other appointments have not been made midway into the administration’s tenure. Just before the second anniversary, the government came out with the blueprint to revive the economy, why did it take so long? Also, the APC led federal government has continued to bemoan the evils of the past. Isn’t two years enough to forget the woes of the past and concentrate on the future?
It is unfortunate that people have mindset and mindsets are difficult to change. If we spent two years bemoaning the past we will not achieve what I have rolled out for you right now. And please mark what you said about it, the economic recovery plan and growth plan is not something that we just did, no. It was what we built on sustainable programme of 2015 and the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan is not for this year, it is for 2017 to 2020. It is like, this is our economic blueprint and our objectives are three things. One, get out of recession; two, invest in Nigerians; and three, build a sustainable economy; which is hinged on five pillars: one, correcting the micro-economic environment, ensuring sufficiency in transportation infrastructure, ensuring sufficiency in food and agriculture, ensuring sufficiency in energy and power and finally, ensuring that a conducive environment for medium, small and micro businesses is achieved because the sector contributes 50 per cent to our GDP.
Now coming back to our first question, it is not true that if cabinet had been immediately constituted there would have been no recession. The indices were clearly there. Recession was bound to happen. I mean, what do you do when you have an economy that is built on one and one product alone and the product price crashes from $114 to $40?
No. I don’t think so; I disagree with you. Yes, people say it took so long to form the cabinet but they forgot two important things; APC itself was a product of a merger of political parties and between that merger and the election was under eighteen months. So, that was a big challenge on the hands of everybody; it was not like when I was in ACN, we had the structure, we know everybody, you know that after you won the elections you know who to reward and who not to reward. Now we have about four political parties: ANPP, part of PDP, ACN, CPC and APGA which is not easy.
Secondly, which is very important; this is a government in opposition, for the first time coming to power. Now we didn’t have the luxury that the Obasanjo administration had in 1999 when elections were completed in January 1999 and he didn’t assume office until May. And again, in 2003, it was the same government, so the issue of constituting cabinet was much easier. Here, we were dealing with two very new and strange phenomena at the same time, but for anybody to say that recession wouldn’t have happened or lasted that long is not correct. Look at all the indices.
One of the areas this administration said it had done so well was in the fight against corruption, yet there are views that it is one sided and that it was targeted at the members of the leading opposition party while those sympathetic to the ruling party are left to go free. There are also criticisms that instead of corruption cases being tried in the law courts most are tried in the media. How would you react to this?
See, he that does not have a wife cannot lose his in-law. Those that are saying that the anti corruption fight is against one party have forgotten that one political party had access to public funds, had access to public patronage for 16 unbroken years, therefore if you are fighting corruption, they are going to be the first people to come and answer for their stewardship. That was why I said if you were never married you cannot come and say your in-law is late. You cannot come and say you want to probe Lai Muhammed because Lai Muhammed was in opposition for 16 years, he never held any
I can assure you that if it had been business as usual and APC had not come to power, it would probably have been much worse because we met an economy that was on the brink of total collapse. And what are the indices of an economy that is on the brink of collapse? An economy where there is no infrastructure, an economy where there is no savings to fall back on, an economy which is built around one single product, an economy where corruption was rampant, where there was no accountability, where there was impunity and where there was no discipline; an economy that puts more emphasis on consumption than production. This was the economy we inherited. That we are in recession, it was bound to happen, the indices were there clearly