Acting President Prof. Yemi
Osinbajo delivered a hope-raising speech to Nigerians to commemorate Democracy
Day and the second year in office of the APC (All Progressives Congress).
Below is
the full speech
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.
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.
Our administration outlined three
specific areas for our immediate intervention on assumption of office: these
were Security, Corruption and the Economy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
May
God bless you all, and bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
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