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| Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, the Acting President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria |
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AgP
@ProfOsinbajo w/ other Heads of
State at the @g7 Summit in Italy, today.
The G7 held a Special Meeting on Africa. May 27th
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Dear Nigerians, I bring you good wishes
from President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, who as we all know is away from the
country on medical vacation.
1. Today marks the second anniversary of our
assumption of office. We must thank the Almighty God not only for preserving
our lives to celebrate this second anniversary, but for giving us hope,
strength and confidence as we faced the challenges of the past two
years.
2. Our administration outlined three specific
areas for our immediate intervention on assumption of office: these were
Security, Corruption and the Economy.
3. In the Northeast of our country, the
terrorist group Boko Haram openly challenged the sovereignty and continued
existence of the state, killing, maiming and abducting, causing the
displacement of the largest number of our citizens in recent history. Beyond
the North East they extended their mindless killings, as far away as Abuja,
Kano and Kaduna.
4. But with new leadership and renewed confidence
our gallant military immediately began to put Boko Haram on the back foot. We
have restored broken-down relations with our neighbours, Chad, Cameroon and
Niger – allies without whom the war against terror would have been extremely
difficult to win. We have re-organized and equipped our Armed Forces, and
inspired them to heroic feats; we have also revitalized the regional
Multinational Joint Task Force, by providing the required funding and
leadership.
5. The positive results are clear for all to see.
In the last two years close to one million displaced persons have returned
home. 106 of our daughters from Chibok have regained their freedom, after more
than two years in captivity, in addition to the thousands of other captives who
have since tasted freedom.
6. Schools, hospitals and businesses are
springing back to life across the Northeast, especially in Borno State, the
epicentre of the crisis. Farmers are returning to the farms from which they
fled in the wake of Boko Haram. Finally, our people are getting a chance to
begin the urgent task of rebuilding their lives.
7. Across the country, in the Niger Delta, and in
parts of the North Central region, we are engaging with local communities, to
understand their grievances, and to create solutions that respond to these
grievances adequately and enduringly.
8. President Buhari’s New Vision for the Niger
Delta is a comprehensive peace, security and development plan that will ensure
that the people benefit fully from the wealth of the region, and we have seen
to it that it is the product of deep and extensive consultations, and that it
has now moved from idea to execution. Included in that New Vision is the
long-overdue environmental clean-up of the Niger Delta beginning with
Ogoni-land, which we launched last year.
9. More recent threats to security such as the
herdsmen clashes with farmers in many parts of the country sometimes leading to
fatalities and loss of livelihoods and property have also
preoccupied our security structures. We are working with State governments, and
tasking our security agencies with designing effective strategies and
interventions that will bring this menace to an end. We are determined to
ensure that anyone who uses violence, or carries arms without legal authority
is apprehended and sanctioned.
10. In the fight against
corruption, we have focused on bringing persons accused of
corruption to justice. We believe that the looting of public resources that
took place in the past few years has to be accounted for. Funds appropriated to
build roads, railway lines, and power plants, and to equip the military, that
had been stolen or diverted into private pockets, must be retrieved and the
culprits brought to justice. Many have said that the process is slow, and that
is true, corruption has fought back with tremendous resources and our system of
administration of justice has been quite slow. But the good news for
justice is that our law does not recognize a time bar for the prosecution of
corruption and other crimes, and we will not relent in our efforts to apprehend
and bring corruption suspects to justice. We are also re-equipping our
prosecution teams, and part of the expected judicial reforms is to
dedicate some specific courts to the trial of corruption cases.
11. We are also
institutionalizing safeguards and deterrents. We have expanded the coverage of
the Treasury Single Account (TSA). We have introduced more efficient accounting
and budgeting systems across the Federal Government. We have also launched an
extremely successful Whistleblower Policy.
12.
The Efficiency Unit of
the Federal Ministry of Finance has succeeded in plugging leakages amounting to
billions of naira, over the last two years. We have ended expensive and
much-abused fertilizer and petrol subsidy regimes.
13.
We have taken very
seriously our promise to save and invest for the future, even against the
backdrop of our revenue challenges, and we have in the last two years added
US$500m to our Sovereign Wealth Fund and US$87m to the Excess Crude Account.
This is the very opposite of the situation before now, when rising oil prices
failed to translate to rising levels of savings and investment.
14.
Admittedly, the
economy has proven to be the biggest challenge of all. Let me first express
just how concerned we have been, since this administration took office, about
the impact of the economic difficulties on our citizens.
15.
Through no fault of
theirs, some companies shut down their operations, others downsized; people
lost jobs, had to endure rising food prices. In some States civil servants
worked months on end without the guarantee of a salary, even as rents and
school fees and other expenses continued to show up like clockwork.
16.
We have been extremely
mindful of the many sacrifices that you have had to make over the last few
years. And for this reason this administration’s work on the economic front has
been targeted at a combination of short-term interventions to cushion the pain,
as well as medium to long term efforts aimed at rebuilding an economy that is
no longer helplessly dependent on the price of crude oil.
17.
Those short-term
interventions include putting together a series of bailout packages for our
State Governments, to enable them bridge their salary shortfalls – an issue the
President has consistently expressed his concerns about. We also began the hard
work of laying out a framework for our Social Intervention Programme, the most
ambitious in the history of the country.
18.
One of the first tasks
of the Cabinet and the Economic Management Team was to put together a Strategic
Implementation Plan for the 2016 budget, targeting initiatives that would
create speedy yet lasting impact on the lives of Nigerians.
19.
Indeed, much of 2016
was spent clearing the mess we inherited and putting the building blocks
together for the future of our dreams; laying a solid foundation for the kind
of future that you deserve as citizens of Nigeria.
20.
In his Budget
Presentation Speech to the National Assembly last December, President Buhari
outlined our Economic Agenda in detail, and assured that 2017 -would be the
year in which you would begin to see tangible benefits of all the planning and
preparation work. It is my pleasure to note that in the five months since he
delivered that speech, we have seen tremendous progress, as promised.
21.
Take the example of
our Social Investment Programme, which kicked off at the end of 2016. Its Home
Grown School Feeding component is now feeding more than 1 million primary
school children across seven states and would be feeding three million by the
end of the year. N-Power, another component has engaged 200,000 unemployed
graduates – none of whom needed any ‘connections’ to be selected. Beneficiaries
are already telling the stories of how these initiatives have given them a
fresh start in their lives.
22.
Micro credit to a
million artisans, traders and market men and women has begun. While conditional
cash transfers to eventually reach a million of the poorest and most vulnerable
households has also begun.
23.
Road and power
projects are ongoing in every part of the country. In rail, we are making
progress with our plans to attract hundreds of millions of dollars in investment
to upgrade the existing 3,500km narrow-gauge network. We have also in 2017
flagged-off construction work on the Lagos-Ibadan leg of our standard-gauge
network, and are close to completing the first phase of Abuja’s Mass Transit
Rail System.
24.
In that Budget speech
in December, the President announced the take-off of the Presidential
Fertilizer Initiative. Today, five months on, that Initiative – the product of
an unprecedented bilateral cooperation with the Government of Morocco – has
resulted in the revitalisation of 11 blending plants across the country, the
creation of 50,000 direct and indirect jobs so far, and in the production of
300,000 metric tonnes of NPK fertilizer, which is being sold to farmers at
prices significantly lower than what they paid last year. By the end of 2017,
that Fertilizer Initiative would have led to foreign exchange savings of US$200
million; and subsidy savings of 60 billion naira.
25.
The Initiative is
building on the solid gains of the Anchor Borrowers Programme, launched in 2015
to support our rice and wheat farmers, as part of our move towards guaranteeing
food security for Nigeria.
26.
All of this is
evidence that we are taking very seriously our ambition of agricultural
self-sufficiency. I am delighted to note that since 2015 our imports of rice
have dropped by 90 percent, while domestic production has almost tripled. Our
goal is to produce enough rice to meet local demand by 2019. In
April, the President launched our Economic Recovery and Growth Plan which built
on the foundations laid by the Strategic implementation Plan of
2016. The plan has set forth a clear vision for the economic
development of Nigeria. I will come back to this point presently.
27.
Another highlight of
the President’s Budget Speech was our work around the Ease of Doing Business
reforms. As promised we have since followed up with implementation and
execution. I am pleased to note that we are now seeing verifiable progress
across several areas, ranging from new Visa on Arrival scheme, to reforms at our
ports and regulatory agencies.
28.
The President also
promised that 2017 would see the rollout of Executive Orders to facilitate
government approvals, support procurement of locally made goods, and improve
fiscal responsibility. We have kept that promise. This month we issued three
Executive Orders to make it easier for citizens to get the permits and licenses
they require for their businesses, to mandate Government agencies to spend more
of their budgets on locally produced goods, and to promote budget transparency
and efficiency. The overarching idea is to make Government Agencies and
Government budgets work more efficiently for the people.
29.
The impact of our Ease
of Doing Business work is gradually being felt by businesses small and large;
its successful take-off has allowed us to follow up with the MSME Clinics -our
Small Business support programme, which has taken us so far to Aba,
Sokoto, Jos, Katsina, and we expect to be in all other states in due
course.
30.
Let me note, at this
point, that several of our Initiatives are targeted at our young people, who
make up most of our population. From N-Power, to the Technology Hubs being
developed nationwide, to innovation competitions such as the Aso Villa Demo
Day, and our various MSME support schemes, we will do everything to nurture the
immense innovative and entrepreneurial potential of our young people. We are a
nation of young people, and we will ensure that our policies and programmes
reflect this.
31.
One of the highlights
of our Power Sector Recovery Programme, which we launched in March, is a N701
billion Naira Payment Assurance Scheme that will resolve the financing
bottlenecks that have until now constrained the operations of our gas suppliers
and generation companies. Let me assure that you will soon begin to see the
positive impact of these steps.
32.
Our Solid Minerals
Development Fund has also now taken off, in line with our commitment to
developing the sector. Because of our unerring focus on Solid Minerals
development over the last two years, the sector has, alongside Agriculture,
seen impressive levels of growth – in spite of the recession.
33.
On the whole, just as
the President promised in the Budget Speech, these early months of 2017 have
seen the flowering of the early fruit of all the hard work of our first
eighteen months.
34.
We opened the year
with an overwhelmingly successful Eurobond Offer – evidence of continuing
investor interest in Nigeria. We have also launched the Economic Recovery and
Growth Plan (ERGP) 2017-2020, to build on the gains of last year’s Strategic
Implementation Plan. And the implementation of our 2017 Budget, which will soon
be signed into law, will bring added impetus to our ongoing economic recovery.
In the 2016 Budget we spent 1.2 Trillion Naira on infrastructure projects, another
milestone in the history of this country. Our 2017 Budget will double that
investment.
35.
That budget also
provides for substantial investment to implement the rollout of Industrial
Parks and Special Economic Zones (SEZs), as well as our Social Housing Programme.
The Industrial Parks and Economic Zones will fulfill our ambition of making
Nigeria a manufacturing hub, while the Family Home Fund of our Social
Housing Programme will provide inexpensive mortgages for low-income individuals
and families across the country.
36.
These plans offer yet
more evidence that we are ramping up the pace of work; the work of fulfilling
all that we promised. In the next two years we will build on the successes of
the last two. We have demonstrated a willingness to learn from our mistakes and
to improve on our successes. The critical points that we must address fully in
the next two years are : Agriculture and food security, Energy, (power and
Petroleum,) Industrialization and Transport infrastructure. Every step of the
way we will be working with the private sector, giving them the necessary
incentives and creating an environment to invest and do business.
37.
Our vision is for a
country that grows what it eats and produces what it consumes. It is for a
country that no longer has to import petroleum products, and develops a
lucrative petrochemical industry. Very importantly it is for a
country whose fortunes are no longer tied to the price of a barrel of crude,
but instead to the boundless talent and energy of its people, young and old,
male and female as they invest in diverse areas of the economy.
38.
And that vision is
also for a country where the wealth of the many will no longer be stolen by or
reserved for a few; and where the impunity of corruption – whether in the
public or private sectors – will no longer be standard operating practice; a
land rid of bandits and terrorists.
39.
As citizens you all
deserve a country that works, not merely for the rich or connected, but for
everyone. And our promise to you is that we will, with your support and
cooperation, take every step needed to create that country of our dreams.
40.
We also know that this
journey will of necessity take time. But we will not succumb to the temptation
to take short-cuts that ultimately complicate the journey. We did not find
ourselves in crises overnight, and we simply do not expect overnight solutions
to our challenges.
41.
The most important
thing is that we are on the right path, and we will not deviate from it, even
in the face of strong temptation to choose temporary gain over long-term
benefit. As the President has summed it up: “The old Nigeria is slowly but
surely disappearing, and a new era is rising.”
42.
And so we commemorate
this second anniversary of our administration with confidence and optimism. I
firmly believe that we have put the most difficult phase behind us; and we are
witnesses to the ever-increasing intensity of the light at the end of the
tunnel. We ask for your continued cooperation and support, to enable us realise
all our best intentions and ambitions for Nigeria. On our part We will continue
to carry you along on this journey, speak to you, explain the challenges, and
share our Vision.
43.
And while we all daily
pre-occupy ourselves with pursuing the Nigerian Dream – which is the desire to
better our lives and circumstances vigorously and honestly – it is inevitable
that grievances and frustrations will arise from time to time.
44.
This is normal. What
is not normal, or acceptable, is employing these frustrations as justification
for indulging in discrimination or hate speech or hateful conduct of any kind,
or for seeking to undermine by violent or other illegal means the very
existence of the sovereign entity that has brought us all together as brothers
and sisters and citizens.
45.
Nigeria belongs to all
of us. No one person or group of persons is more important or more entitled
than the other in this space that we all call home. And we have a
responsibility to live in peace and harmony with one another, to seek peaceful
and constitutional means of expressing our wishes and desires, and to resist
all who might seek to sow confusion and hatred for their own selfish
interests.
46.
Before I end this
speech, let me ask for your continued prayers for the restoration to full
health and strength and the safe return of our President.
47.
I congratulate all of
you on today’s commemoration of this important day in the democratic calendar
our country. Nigeria is on a journey of greatness, and together we shall arrive
at the destination of our dreams.
48.
May God bless you all,
and bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
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