The national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and
former Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu, has challenged President Muhammadu
Buhari to do more to improve the lot of citizens. Tinubu gave the advice
yesterday while unveiling a book, Making Steady, Sustainable Progress for
Nigeria’s Peace and Prosperity, at the old Banquet Hall of the Presidential
Villa, Abuja.
The
360-page book is a mid-term scorecard on the Buhari administration put together
by the Presidential Media Team. The APC chieftain who refrained from
commenting on the 2019 elections, said although Buhari had used the last two
years to lay foundation for a better Nigeria, many citizens were still in lack,
due to the prevailing economic crunch.
“Many
of our people are without basic needs. Too many parents cannot properly feed
and clothe their precious children. Too many young adults exist in the void of
joblessness, and too many of us do not have the resources to care for elderly
parents who once cared for us. We must cure these wrongs,” he said.
Tinubu
implored the Buhari administration to hasten and complete the good works it had
started. “Do it the more. The good that you are yet to achieve, get to it with
a laser-like focus,” he said.The former governor, who was special guest of honour
at the occasion, noted that Nigeria could not make appreciable progress without
robust industrial capacity.
“Our
national industrial revolution plan must be more than mere words. It must be
refined. Just as the private sector may partner with government on public
endeavours, government must guide and support the private sector into new areas
of industry and production.
“Government
must invest in research and new products the private sector may find risky and
uncertain at the initial stage. Government policy must push and
incentivise the private sector into production of goods that will be demanded
in the immediate future and for some time to come.
“Whether
we focus on steel, textiles, cars, machinery components, processed agricultural
goods, other items, or any combination of the above, we must manufacture things
the rest of the world wants to buy and not necessarily the things we think are
the easiest to do,” Tinubu said.
According
to him, as a corollary to the push for industrial maturity, Nigeria needs a
national infrastructural plan that accords with both the industrial plan and
with extant agricultural activity. The fulcrum of the plan must be continued
progress in the achievement of adequate and affordable electric power,
especially solar and wind.
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“We must
help the common farmer by improving rural output and income. We must
return to commodity exchange boards or similar mechanism to allow farmers to
secure their income and prevent loss. An active and expanded agricultural loan
scheme is needed to further promote these goals.
“More
needs to be done to make business and consumer credit available by lowering
interest rates. We also must move toward true federalism by the balance of
power and responsibility between the Federal Government and the states. In so
doing, we attain the correct balance between our collective purpose on one hand
and our separate grassroots realities on the other,” he said.
Tinubu
further accused the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan of
corruption, saying so much money
grew feet and ran away from the country, faster than Usain Bolt ever could.
“The
prior government used the public treasury as a private hedge fund or a charity
that limited giving only to themselves. One minister and her rogue gallery
picked the pocket of this nation for billions of dollars. While poor at
governance, these people could give a master thief lessons in sleight of hand.
In governance, they earned a red card. But in corruption, they won the gold
medal. It was not that our institutions had become infected by corruption;
corruption had become institutionalised,” he said
President
Buhari seized the occasion to reiterate his resolve to prosecute anyone who
dips his hand in the public coffers. He assured that his government was
making efforts to ease the prevailing economic hardship by creating more jobs
and social security platforms for vulnerable families.
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