Nigeria is safe for tourism —Lai Mohammed

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has said that with President Muhammadu Buhari piloting the affairs of Nigeria, the country is in very safe and competent hands, hence there is no cause for alarm.

The Minister said this at a mini town hall meeting with the staff of the Nigerian Embassy in Madrid, Spain, and a cross section of Nigerians living in the European country on Saturday.

He said contrary to fake news being peddled on the social media, Nigeria is making steady progress, especially in revamping the economy, tackling insecurity and fighting corruption – the three cardinal programmes of the Buhari administration.

“Don’t believe everything you read on the social media. Nigeria is neither at war nor in crisis,’’ Alhaji Mohammed said. “Contrary to what you may be reading on the Internet, the Buhari administration is putting Nigeria on a solid footing, after the years that were eaten by the locust.’’

He said naysayers are spending millions of Naira to distort the true situation of things in Nigeria and to make the administration look bad.

The Minister said the administration’s achievements should be evaluated against the background of the tough challenges that it has faced since coming into office on 29 May, 2015.

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“It is said that if you don’t know where you are coming from, you won’t know where you are going,’’ he said, listing the drastic fall in the price of crude oil, the low foreign reserves at $24 billion, the fact that the Federal Government was borrowing to pay workers’ salaries, and the fact that many states were unable to pay salaries as some of those challenges.

Alhaji Mohammed also said when the administration came into office, unpaid pensions had run into billions of Naira in many states, contractors had abandoned sites across the country because they were being heavily owed, infrastructure was in poor state, power generation was 2,690 megawatts, billions were being paid as ‘fuel subsidies’ to fat cats, corruption was the order of the day, while 20 of the 27 local governments in Borno were under the firm control of Boko Haram.

“Today, the trend is being reversed, and the results are showing: Foreign reserves is now $42.8 billion, the highest level in four years, inflation has fallen for 12 consecutive months to 15.13 per cent, 108 billion Naira has been saved from removal of maintenance fees payable to banks before Treasury Single Account (TSA), the nation is being saved 24.7 billion Naira monthly with the full implementation of the TSA and the elimination of ghost workers has saved the nation 120 billion Naira.

“With improved macro-economic conditions, capital inflow is on the upswing, reaching $1.8 billion in the second quarter of 2017, which is almost double the $908 million in the first quarter, Nigeria’s stock market is one of the best-performing in the world, delivering returns in excess of 40 percent, Nigeria jumped 24 places on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business ranking, and earned a place on the List of Top 10 Reformers in the world,’’ he said.

The Minister also told the meeting that the administration’s agricultural revolution is moving Nigeria close to self-sufficiency in many staples, especially rice, that the home-Grown School Feeding Programme has created jobs for 61,352 cooks, and it is providing 6.4 million school children in 33,981 schools across 20 states with one meal a day, that power generation has increased to 7,000 megawatts, that Boko Haram has been massively degraded and that the administration is embarking on a  massive infrastructural renewal.

Alhaji Mohammed, who urged Nigerians to download the FGN-iAPP in order to get authentic news from Nigeria, later fielded questions from Nigerians, with many of them seeking to know when Nigerians in the diaspora will be able to vote, how they can access the national identity card, how they can get authentic information from Nigeria and what the Federal Government is doing to end the herder-farmer clashes.

Nigeria’s Ambassador to Spain, Mrs Susan Aderonke Folarin, led the staff of the embassy to the town hall meeting, which was held at the embassy premises.