Minister slams opposition for downplaying laud Buhari’s achievements

Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has slammed the country’s opposition political parties for downplaying the unprecedented achievements of President Muhammadu Buhari Administration, saying they are being deliberately and perpetually blind to the achievements.

Mohammed, spoke while inaugurating the 22-member newly-elected Governing Council of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), under the chairmanship of Mallam Mukhtar Sirajo, in Abuja on Thursday.

Describing the opposition as unserious and disdainful of the truth, he said they lack ideas and believe that being in opposition means crying wolf where there is none and spewing out fake information at the speed of light!

”Where is the seriousness in an opposition party throwing out a spurious figure of N10 trillion as the amount of money that has been looted under the present administration? What is Nigeria’s annual national budget?

How do you react to an opposition that is deliberately and perpetually blind to the monumental achievements of this Administration”, Alhaji Mohammed queried.

He said while naysayers might pretend not to have seen all these achievements, ”Nigerians who are benefitting directly from them have testified to the reality of the successes”.

Listing some of the achievements of the Administration, the Minister said it had taken power generation from 2,690MW to 7,000MW, moved Nigeria closer to self-sufficiency in rice than any Administration before it, increased the number of rice farmers from 5 million to an all-time high over 11 million and cut Nigeria’s rice import bill of $1.65 billion annually by 90%.

”We are feeding 8.2 million pupils in 45,394 schools in 24 states, employing 87,261 cooks in the process; we are paying conditional cash transfer of N5,000 monthly to 297,973 poorest and most vulnerable households, never before done in Nigeria;

we are building roads, rail and power, spending an unprecedented 2.7 trillion Naira on infrastructure alone in just two years; we have raised capital expenditure in the yearly national budget to an unprecedented 30% on the average, our Social Investment Programs have benefitted 9 million people.

”The school children who are being fed, the unemployed graduate who has now been employed under N-Power; the small business owner who has benefitted from the GEEP loans and the thousands of people who have been rescued from the clutches of Boko Haram know that these achievements are real,” amongst others.

Alhaji Mohammed advised Public Relations practitioners never to be tired or discouraged from projecting the image of their establishments, even when some people decide to play the blind or the spoiler.