Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, was recently at the corporate headquarters of LEADERSHIP Newspaper Group Ltd in Abuja as part of his continuous engagement with stakeholders in the media industry. He speaks about the myriads of difficulties being experienced in the country, including the lingering fuel scarcity, poor power supply and inflation. He also explains what the federal government is doing concerning the 2016 budget.
Purpose Of Visit
My visit here today is part of my continuous engagements with stakeholders in the media industry. I want to thank LEADERSHIP Newspaper for the support during the election period in a professional and objective manner.
Although sometimes you have been hard on us, but I feel at home to be here today. We have visited so many other media houses too.
Basically, there is no substitute between my ministry, me as the minister and the stakeholders in the media industry. Because this will help them in knowing more about the workings of the government.
Today, I am here to tell you and Nigerians how we are fairing, our challenges and messages of hope for the country and this will cover a few critical areas, I must first start by appreciating Nigerians for their support in voting in this government, for their perseverance and understanding amidst the current challenges we are facing. We won’t take Nigerians for granted and I will continue to let you know what effort government is making to redeem all our campaign promises.
We know that the past few weeks have been quite challenging for all Nigerians especially due to the lingering fuel scarcity, and we know that Nigerians have gone through a lot and we understand this hardship and we sympathise with you, but I want to assure Nigerians that measures are being put in place to put an end to the hardship.
Mr President also raised this point recently, where he raised concern over power failure and assured that everything will be done to ensure that it does not last too long. I want to reassure you that the government is committed and working 24 hours to ensure that the hardship being caused by the lingering fuel scarcity and erratic power supply are addressed and in a matter of days or weeks, most of these will become a thing of the past.
Fuel Scarcity
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC and the Ministry of Petroleum Resources have both put in short, medium and long term measures to put an end to this scarcity. The purpose is to ensure that this fuel scarcity is wiped off and tamed, ensuring that Nigerians freely get fuel for their private use.
The first thing they have done is to ramp up supply and distribution and as I speak today, they have ensured sufficient supply in the major cities in the country including Abuja, Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, and Port Harcourt. However, the reason why the effect is not being felt is because of the backlog that have been caused by this scarcity, and they are also working hard to ensure that supply gets to the inner cities.
Also, the issue of the unavailability of foreign exchange which has prevented the major oil companies and fuel marketers to bring in fuel has been tackled.
As of today, only the NNPC is being given refined products, because even the NNPC is improving in its direct sales and direct purchase, which is exchanging of crude for refined products. But this cannot be sustained on long term basis because it can only meet 60 per cent of the country’s daily consumption. The consumption of PMS alone in the country is 45 million liters. So, fortunately, we have been able to convince the Central Bank Of Nigerian, CBN to make more FOREX available for oil marketers who will compliment the effort of the NNPC to encourage the oil majors, marketers who are operating in the upstream to bailout their companies operating in the downstream by making available to them FOREX to get refined products.
But we know the ultimate solution is when we will be self-sufficient by making our refinery operational and be able to produce what we need at home and for export.
By this, we will ensure that all our refineries in few weeks time, are working at 70 per cent capacity. In addition, we have encouraged few and modular refinery still existing.
The NNPC has gone into partnerships with companies that have both the technical and financial capacity to have a permanent solution to our storage and logistics problems. So that when we find ourselves in this situation, Nigerians won’t feel it.
We are here to assure Nigerians that we would do everything to persuade their pain.
Power Outage
We are not here to make excuses but to tell you what the government is doing to solve this challenges. With close supervision of all these generating companies, Discos and other generating companies, we were able to achieve 5,000 megawatts in the country. But unfortunately, two days after, we had the horrific attack on the Forcados export platform, and this made all our plants in that area to be shut down. You know, about 11 of our gas pipelines in that area rely on gas, in Sapele, Nnewi and co. That attack and shut down has made the nation loss like 1,000 megawatts of power daily, the good news is that the Shell, which is the owner and operator of the Forcados platform, has accepted the damage and awarded the contract. But while this is going on, the NNPC is devising means of getting alternative sources to get gas to power the turbine.
Again, we have also accelerated the transmission in the Southeast and South -south, notably in Imo, Enugu, Cross River and Akwa Ibom states. Here, we don’t have the problem of gas but evacuation. We have about 800 megawatts which are waiting to be distributed there and of course, when you go to the NIPC in Olorunsogo, Omotosho and Sapele today, they are ready for operations and have a combined capacity of like 2,000 megawatts. But due to unavailability of gas, they are producing less than 500 megawatts. So all efforts to get gas and transmission will make us hit 5,000 megawatts.
Load Shedding
When power was generated for like 5,000 megawatts and above, you get power supply everywhere but when you cut down to 4,000 megawatts, you have to start load shedding. But unfortunately, we are operating on about 3,500 megawatts because of lack of gas. What makes the load shedding more acute and more devastating is that when you are operating on this, the grid which are little and fragile and systemic, collapse. But we are trying to climb out of the 3,500 megawatts.
Economic Hardship
I am here to let you know that yes, we have challenges but we are working 24 hours to address these challenges. People are complaining about inflation, unemployment, general hardship. The good news is that with the passage of the budget, things will be better, and I want to say that there is no rift between the executive arm of government and the legislative arm of government.
And it is not true that the president has refused to ascent the budget, what he is having is the headline figures which will take the National Assembly few days to get the clean details for the president to sign. Fortunately, the incumbent minister of national planning was one time chairman Senate Committee on appropriation, so he is vast with the workings of the National Assembly. So there is rift between the two arms. But things are taking their due process.
The good thing about the budget is that it is a budget that we want to use to inflate the economy by spending largely on infrastructural projects. We intend to immediately make N350 million available to ensure that all incomplete projects are completed so we have been in touch with the contractors. Some of them are being owed since 2012. So, we want them to bring back their workers and start where they stopped. One thing about spending on infrastructure is that it becomes a catalyst for growth and development for the non oil sector.
In a very short time, solid minerals and agriculture will start taking up by having good transport system.
Special Intervention Fund
The budget is also a budget of social inclusion. That is, everyone will be included and this will be N500 billion although it is often misunderstood. The intervention fund would be used to better the lives of Nigerians in six key components including; the employment of 500,000 graduates to be trained as teachers; 370,000 unemployed non-graduates, which include National Diploma (ND) holders, to be trained and employed, one million market traders and artisans to be trained and given loans. Others are; school feeding programme from primary 1-3; conditional transfer meant for the most vulnerable Nigerians, especially the rural dwellers as well as scholarships for students studying courses in science and technology, engineering and mathematics.
So that is why we say the budget will be a budget of social inclusion.
Agriculture
In the agriculture, we will be self-sufficient in rice production. The Minister of Agriculture has assured us that by the end of 2017, we should be self -sufficient in rice production.
And billions of naira would be saved from importation of rice. For tomatoes too, we will be self -sufficient by the end of this year and for cashew nut, we are still number one in cashew export. Most of the agriculture policies today are aimed at improving the country’s agriculture, creating feeder roads for ease transportation.
Terrorism
In the areas of fighting terrorism, I think we should appreciate the federal government, given what is happening all over the world today.
I also want to correct an impression of the Minister of Defence’s address to the media in Washington where he said what they are doing now is mopping up, and he said there are one or two local governments where the insurgents are still launching gorilla attacks. The fact is there is no ward or local government under the control of Boko Haram anymore. And the clear evidence that this war has been won is that the major highway leading to Maiduguri has been opened, they were shot for a very long time. I think we must really commend our military, because this is one of the rear occasions in the world where a government successfully defeat insurgency. There are three ways that insurgency normally end. Either they overcome and win and impose their government, it has happened in Iran and France and other parts of the world, or you have to negotiate with them . This has happened in South Africa and Latin America. Nigeria is one of the few countries in the world that has successfully defeated insurgents and like we said in January, when we started this campaign, that the defeat of terrorism doesn’t mean the end of hostility, because once you defeat insurgency, they will no longer have the ability to operate like the normal army. Their fortresses are already being invaded, so what they do now is to attack soft spots such markets, mosques, churches and the likes. And those who ask what is the government doing about this, should look at country’s like France, were terrorists successfully attack soft targets. What we are doing in Nigeria today is to ramp up surveillance and intelligence gathering. Hence, we are now sensitising our people on how to identify suicide bombers, IED, and what to do if they hear any explosion. So ,generally, this is what to do. So we have now embarked on rehabilitation, reconstruction and resettlement of our people. We are moving people today to join their families.
Also, the Borno State government is doing a fantastic work there, rebuilding schools, towns and institutions. So, we must commend our troops. Those who live in the Northeast appreciate what we are doing better than those who are commenting from Abuja.
There are people who could not visit there town for a long while but, they are doing so now. So we are in complete control of our territory. Formally, the insurgents used to hoist there flags but today, there is no town or city where Boko Haram can hoist their flag.
Agatu/Fulani Clash
In the issue of Agatu and herdsmen clash, some people have said that the government is not doing anything about it which is not correct. The way we handle clashes is different from the way you handle other internal crisis. I am aware that a lot of work are going on between the communities and security agencies, towards finding a lasting solution to the Fulani and Agatu crisis. Government has also step up measures to address this.
Corruption
On the war against corruption, we remain focused and we are happy that we are getting lots of support from the media and the judiciary, with the directive of two weeks from the CJN, on criminal cases.
We are also receiving money. Just last week, Mallam Garba Shehu, in a statement, said about N7 billion was recovered from the committee that was involved in the arms contracts, and I know that other arms of government are also recovering money. Very soon, details of looted funds will be made public. The response from the international community and their readiness to assist in repatriating looted fund, are evidence of the kind of leadership that President Muhammadu Buhari has put in place. We must let people know that rule of law is not a shield to criminal act.
But the fact is, so far, nobody has denied taking money from the $2.1 billion arms scandal, they only try to justify that they do not know that the money that they took was coming from the arms funds. The truth is, this money was arms money to fight Boko Haram. The reasons why Boko Haram lasted so long was because money meant to fight insurgency was diverted to private pockets and a lot of lives were lost as a result of this, same as millions of people living in IDPs camp. All these were because of corruption. We want Nigerians to know what corruption has done to them in terms of development, maternity and infant mortality, educational standards, lack of power.
When money meant for a project is diverted to other projects, you are going to have underdevelopment, so those who are accusing us of breaching the rule of law we just say it is corruption that is fighting back.
No matter the economic policy, once there is corruption in the system, it won’t work. What we are doing is that for once, we are trying to instill discipline. Money meant for the public must not be diverted into private pockets. And I am happy that most of the measures put in place are working.
With the Single Treasury Account, TSA today, Nigerians have saved several billions of Naira. With combined discipline and vigilant, we have been able to weed out over 28,000 ghost workers. Another 11,000 are being investigated. That means with this, we will be having close to 50,000 ghost workers who will be eliminated from our system in a couple of weeks. This accounts to several billions of Naira a month that can be used for other major projects in the country. This is what we have been doing and with the discipline in this administration, we will be able to minimise our cost and reach all our revenue targets.
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