13th March, 2016
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo recently returned to the Victoria Garden City, Lagos where he presented the scorecard of the Muhammadu Buhari administration
By Seun Bisuga
Professor Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s Vice President, is not the regular Nigerian politician. Many citizens of the country only take promises from politicians with a pinch of salt because majority of them are synonymous with unfulfilled promises. But Osinbajo, a legal expert and pastor, knows that failed promises, according to his religion, could amount to a sin. Thus, every promise he has made must be kept.
The Vice President was at the Victoria Garden City, his base in Lagos on Saturday, 27 February, 2016. It was not just a visit; it was to keep one such promise – to always report back to the people of the area concerning the activities of the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, for which he is the number two citizen of the country.
During the campaign, he told the residents that he would always come back for dialogue, present the activities of the government and get residents to make suggestions that could help the government succeed. This time, he told them of how the government was turning the around the economy of the country.
Chrisland School, the venue of the meeting, was full to capacity with Osinbajo reminding them that the Buhari administration had kept faith with the cardinal programmes of the administration. He named the programmes as security, governance, corruption and the economy. The people are already familiar with the activities of Boko Haram, but he told them the sect has been decimated by the country’s military might. With their strength weakened, Osibanjo said the terrorists have now resorted to carrying out attacks on soft targets using children, especially girls, as suicide bombers in some parts of the North-east of the country.
Now, what is more of concern to the government, the Vice President said, was the orphans and widows, which is the current consequence of the atrocities carried out by the sect. Thousands of Nigerians have been killed by the terrorists with many children orphaned and many others widowed. Farmers were seriously affected. Osinbajo disclosed that the Federal Government was working towards resettling the internally displaced persons in their homes.
Besides insurgency, Osinbajo noted that there were concerns in the Niger-Delta due to militant activities. Pipelines have been blown out and there are feuds between farmers and herdsmen. He noted that the government was waging a strong war on corruption in both the public service and the private sector. He told those at the meeting that the government was making efforts to revive the economy which the government met with sharp drop in revenue in May 2015. The foreign exchange reserve was depleted by the previous administration from about $40 billion to about $27.5 billion and because of this, most states could no longer pay full salaries to workers because they depend entirely on the revenue from the federation account. This was the reason for the bail out the Federal Government granted the states recently.
The Professor of Law said government had solid plans for diversification of the economy through a revolution in agriculture and solid minerals. This would also shore up the revenue of the country and create jobs. He said that in agriculture, emphasis would be on improving the entire value chain and turn the nation into a net exporter of rice. The Vice President said that government was intensifying effort to refine petroleum products locally adding that by 2018 the nation would achieve the optimum in refined petroleum products.
Aside from this, the administration will encourage private refineries to meet the local needs for petroleum products, according to Osinbajo, who further said a lot of progress had been made on rail transportation in different parts of the country with the Chinese firm handling the projects. The government is further looking at putting all roads linking major cities in good shape.
Then it was time for questions and answers and Osinbajo restated the position of the Federal Government not to devalue the naira. He also said that the call for the repeal of the Land Use Act would not be a solution for youths going into agriculture. He revealed that the Federal Government was designing a lot of materials for teachers education to improve standards adding that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics would be given priority. “Our priority is how to give relevant education for the 21st century,’” he said.
Accordingly, he said that the administration would engage 500,000 graduate teachers for the rural areas of the country and that the Federal Government was proposing to extend the National Health Insurance Scheme to accommodate every Nigerian. He said the country had a complete policy on the protection of copyright and intellectual property which would be made to work.
In an address, Architect Olusegun Ladega, chairman of the VGC Forum, thanked the Vice President for being an active member of the VGC community. He requested Osinbajo to intervene in the flooding of the estate caused by the non-provision of ancillary drainage on the Lekki-Epe Expressway by the Lagos state government. Apart from this, he asked the Vice President to look into the possibility of giving development associations a voice, through law.
Also, Dr. Tochi Okwor, a resident, expressed concerns about the high rate of communicable diseases such as TB and sexually transmitted diseases like HIV and AIDS. She said this could reach unacceptable proportion if nothing was done. She then advised the Federal Government to remove the National Centres for Disease Control from the Health Ministry and make them independent organisations to enable them to play their roles effectively.
Joseph Sanusi, a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, suggested that the government should be serious with its policy on Public Private Partnership and put it in place in the area of road maintenance. This, according to him, would allow for the tolling of major roads to raise money, for not only the maintenance of existing roads, but also for building new ones. Sanusi also opined that the naira is already devalued. He asked the Federal Government to take a good look at the issue.
In all the townhall meeting was, for most of the participants, a welcome opportunity for the people to remain engaged with the Buhari administration. At least Pastor Ade Asekum, one of the organisers of the meeting, put it clearly: “it was a very good meeting indeed.”