Much of 2016 was spent clearing the mess we inherited —Osinbajo

Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has reassured Nigerians of a more prosperous future, saying the administration spent much of 2016 to clear the mess it inherited.

Osinbajo in his Democracy Day speech on Monday, May 29, marking the second anniversary of the administration, said the government is involved in creating a country of the dreams its people.

In his speech, he highlighted the achievements of government and to reassure citizens of a more prosperous future.

“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,” Osinbajo said.

He said the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration had  witnessed  the fulfillment of promises it made to Nigerians for 2017, while noting that the promise was amplified in the 2017 budget where Buhari outlined the Economic Agenda in detail.

“In his Budget Presentation Speech to the National Assembly last December, President Buhari outlined our Economic Agenda in detail.

“He 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.’’

“Its Home Grown School Feeding component is now feeding more than one 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,” Osinbajo said.

He identified the Social Investment Programme, which he said kicked off at the end of 2016, as a promise fulfilled.

He also said that the micro credit to a million artisans, traders and market men and women as well as the conditional cash transfers, to eventually reach one million of the poorest and most vulnerable households, had begun.

Osinbajo said the road and power projects were ongoing in every part of the country, adding that in rail, the administration was making progress with 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,’’ he added.

He said the Buhari’s promise for the take-off of the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative was yielding results, as it had resulted in the revitalisation of 11 blending plants across the country.

The initiative, he said had resulted in the creation of 50,000 direct and indirect jobs so far, and in the production of 300,000 metric tonnes of NPK fertilizer, while noting that the initiative was a product of an unprecedented bilateral cooperation with the Government of Morocco and that farmers, which aided the purchase of fertilizer at drastically reduced prices.

“By the end of 2017, that Fertilizer Initiative would have led to foreign exchange savings of 200 million dollars; and subsidy savings of N60 billion.

“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 per cent, while domestic production has almost tripled.

“Our goal is to produce enough rice to meet local demand by 2019,’’ Osinbajo said.

As things are now seen working, Osinbajo appealed to Nigerians to eschew violence and division as the country is big enough to accommodate all differences.

He urged the different groups who felt aggrieved with any thing in the country to apply peaceful and legal means to express their wishes.

He said: “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.’’