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| Acting President Yemi Osinbajo |
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo on Monday took stock of the
two years of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration and declared that
positive results were clear for all to see.
Osinbajo said this in a national broadcast to commemorate
the nation’s Democracy Day and the second anniversary of the Buhari
administration.
He recalled that the administration outlined three areas,
comprising security, anti-corruption crusade and the economy for immediate
intervention on assumption of office.
Although he admitted that the economy had remained the
biggest challenge of all, he said the Federal Government had introduced several
measures to revamp it.
While admitting that the fight against corruption appeared
slow because of the slow nature of the nation’s justice system, Osinbajo stated
that efforts were in top gear to recover all stolen funds and bring the
culprits to justice.
On security, he said the government’s achievements in the
North-East, where the Boko Haram sect openly challenged the nation’s
sovereignty, were clear enough for all to see.
Osinbajo stated that under the present administration, the
nation’s military put Boko Haram on the back foot, adding that the nation
restored broken-down relations with its neighbours – Chad, Cameroon and Niger –
without whom the war against terror would have been extremely difficult to win.
He said, “In the last two years, close to one million
displaced persons have returned home. One hundred and six 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 North-East, 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
inaugurated 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 taxing 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.”
On the fight against corruption, Osinbajo said the
government had focused on bringing persons, accused of corruption, to justice.
He stated that it was the administration’s belief that
public resources that were looted in the past few years were 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,” said
the acting President.
“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
recognise 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.”
Osinbajo noted that the Efficiency Unit of the Ministry of
Finance had succeeded in plugging leakages amounting to billions of naira over
the last two years while government had ended expensive and much-abused
fertiliser and petrol subsidy regimes.
He said the present administration in the last two years
added $500m to the Sovereign Wealth Fund and $87m to the Excess Crude Account.
This, according to him, is the opposite of the situation
before now, when rising oil prices failed to translate to rising levels of
savings and investment.
On the economy, Osinbajo regretted that some companies shut
down their operations through no fault of theirs while civil servants worked
for months without salaries in some states.
The acting President added, “Admittedly, the economy has
proved to be the biggest challenge of all.
“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 for 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.”
The short-term interventions, according to him, include
putting together a series of bailout packages for state governments to enable
them to bridge their salary shortfalls.
On the whole, Osinbajo said just as the President promised
in the Budget Speech, the early months of 2017 had seen the flowering of the
early fruit of all the hard work of the administration’s first 18 months.
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