By Ayinde Muhammed
The President of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has cautioned and called on the protesters and the organisers in the ongoing national protest against bad governance in Nigeria to suspend their protest and create room for dialogue.
The president made the call in a national broadcast on 4th August, 2024.
According to him, as the president of Nigeria, he must ensure public order and ensure protection of lives and property of every citizen which is inline with the constitutional oath he took.
“Our government will not stand idly by and allow a few with a clear political agenda to tear this nation apart,” he said.
“Under the circumstances, I hereby enjoin protesters and the organisers to suspend any further protest and create room for dialogue, which I have always acceded to at the slightest opportunity.
President Tinubu noted that Nigeria requires all hands on deck and needs us all – regardless of age, party, tribe, religion or other divides, to work together in reshaping our destiny as a nation.
He also admonished those who have taken undue advantage of this situation to threaten any section of this country, stating that the law will catch up with them.
“There is no place for ethnic bigotry or such threats in the Nigeria we seek to build.”
On the state of economy, the president stated that his administration couldn’t afford to continue the use of temporary solutions to solve long-term problems for the sake of now and our unborn generations.
“I therefore took the painful yet necessary decision to remove fuel subsidies and abolish multiple foreign exchange systems which had constituted a noose around the economic jugular of our Nation and impeded our economic development and progress.”
“These actions blocked the greed and the profits that smugglers and rent-seekers made.
“They also blocked the undue subsidies we had extended to our neighbouring countries to the detriment of our people, rendering our economy prostrate,” he said.
According to the president, these decisions he made were necessary if we must reverse the decades of economic mismanagement that didn’t serve us well.
He assure Nigerian that he is focused fully on delivering the governance to the people – good governance for that matter.
The president rolled out his achievements in the economy which include;
On the fiscal side, aggregate government revenues have more than doubled, hitting over 9.1 trillion Naira in the first half of 2024 compared to the first half of 2023 due to his administration’s efforts at blocking leakages, introducing automation, and mobilising funding creatively without additional burden on the people.
He added that productivity is gradually increasing in the non-oil sector, reaching new levels and taking advantage of the opportunities in the current economic ambience.
“My dear brothers and sisters, we have come this far. Coming from a place where our country spent 97% of all our revenue on debt service; we have been able to reduce that to 68% in the last 13 months.
“We have also cleared legitimate outstanding foreign exchange obligations of about $5billion without any adverse impact on our programmes.”
“This has given us more financial freedom and the room to spend more money on you, our citizens, to fund essential social services like education and healthcare.
“It has also led to our State, and Local Governments receiving the highest allocations ever in our country’s history from the Federation Account.”
On infrastructure, Tinubu said he embarked on major infrastructure projects across the country.
“We are working to complete inherited projects critical to our economic prosperity, including roads, bridges, railways, power, and oil and gas developments.”
“Notably, the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and Sokoto-Badagry Highway projects will open up 16 connecting states, creating thousands of jobs and boosting economic output through trade, tourism and cultural integration.”
President Tinubu also said the once-declining oil and gas industry is experiencing a resurgence on the back of the reforms he announced in May 2024 to address the gaps in the Petroleum Industry Act.
“Last month, we increased our oil production to 1.61million barrels per day, and our gas assets are receiving the attention they deserve.”
“Investors are coming back, and we have already seen two Foreign Direct Investments signed of over half a billion dollars since then,” he noted
“Fellow Nigerians, we are a country blessed with both oil and gas resources, but we met a country that had been dependent solely on oil-based petrol, neglecting its gas resources to power the economy.
We were also using our hard-earned foreign exchange to pay for, and subsidise its use. To address this, we immediately launched our Compressed Natural Gas Initiative (CNG) to power our transportation economy and bring costs down.
He noted that this project will save over two trillion Naira a month, being used to import PMS and AGO and free up our resources for more investment in healthcare and education.
“To this end, we will be distributing a million kits of extremely low or no cost to commercial vehicles that transport people and goods and who currently consume 80% of the imported PMS and AGO.”
“We have started the distribution of conversion kits and setting up of conversion centres across the country in conjunction with the private sector.
“We believe that this CNG initiative will reduce transportation costs by approximately 60 per cent and help to curb inflation.”
On education, the president said his administration has shown its commitment to the youth by setting up the student loan scheme.
He said 45.6billion Naira has already been processed for payment to students and their respective institutions.”
“I encourage more of our vibrant youth population to take advantage of this opportunity.
According to him, his administration established the Consumer Credit Corporation with over N200billion to help Nigerians to acquire essential products without the need for immediate cash payments, making life easier for millions of households.
He said this will consequently reduce corruption and eliminate cash and opaque transactions.
The president noted that he ordered the release of an additional N50billion Naira each for NELFUND – the student loan, and Credit Corporation from the proceeds of crime recovered by the EFCC.
“Additionally, we have secured $620million under the Digital and Creative Enterprises (IDiCE) – a programme to empower our young people, creating millions of IT and technical jobs that will make them globally competitive.
He said these programmes include the 3Million Technical Talents scheme.
“Unfortunately, one of the digital centres was vandalised during the protests in Kano. What a shame!”
“In addition, we have introduced the Skill-Up Artisans Programme (SUPA); the Nigerian Youth Academy (NIYA); and the National Youth Talent Export Programme (NATEP).”
The president also noted that more than N570 billion has been released to the 36 states to expand livelihood support to their citizens, while 600,000 nano-businesses have benefitted from our nano-grants and an additional 400,000 more nano-businesses are expected to benefit.
“We have also built 10 MSME hubs within the past year, created 240,000 jobs through them and 5 more hubs are in progress which will be ready by October this year.”
He added that further 75,000 beneficiaries have been processed to receive N1million Micro and Small Business single-digit interest loans, starting this month.
“We have also built 10 MSME hubs within the past year, created 240,000 jobs through them and 5 more hubs are in progress which will be ready by October this year.”
“Payments of N1billion each are also being made to large manufacturers under our single-digit loans to boost manufacturing output and stimulate growth.”
The president said he has signed the National Minimum Wage into law last week, and the lowest-earning workers will now earn at least N70,000 a month.
He also said his administration is providing incentives to farmers to increase food production at affordable prices.
The president however order Security operatives t continue to maintain peace, law, and order in our country.
