01-28-2018, 07:50 PM
Quote:Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in this interview speaks on some of the challenges and achievements of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, even as he accuses the opposition PDP of making efforts to bring down the government.
By May this year, your government would have been three years in office. Looking back, would you say you have been able to meet the expectations of Nigerians vis-à-vis the promises made during electioneering campaign?
I would rather put it this way, by May, we would be three years in government, and I want you to assess us by what we set out to achieve. We were very categorical that we are going to address three areas of governance. We will fight corruption. We are going to fight insecurity, we will revamp the economy. And looking at these things, we can beat our chest to say that we have done them.
Talking about revamping the economy, just recently, a former CBN deputy Governor said that contrary to the claims of your government Nigeria is yet to exit recession, that in fact what we are experiencing is worse than recession. How do you react to that?
Well, I’d rather work on the figures of the National Bureau for Statistics (NBS), of course there are indices and parameters for whether a country is out of recession or not and clearly even the NBS came out that for the 11th month, we have been able to quell down inflation. Inflation today is 15.37percent, now all indication is that not only have we exited recession we have been making gains either in the area of foreign reserve or in the area of foreign investment or in the area of inflation or job creation. So clearly whatever Mr. Moghalu says, we would always be encouraged by the figures that have been produced by the National Bureau for Statistics and that is the only body today that can tell us whether we are out of recession or not. It is the same body that said we are in recession and the same body said we are out of recession and so far, as of last week, we are not back into recession.
In line with your three-point agenda, in the area of fighting insurgency in the north east and in the south- south, you may have tried, but don’t you think the people have regrouped again?
You see, security is an issue that every nation at one point in time will have to contend with. I am happy you acknowledged that we have been making progress in fighting insecurity in other parts of the country, the herdsmen/farmers clash was not invented by this government, it actually predate this government and if you go back to history, it almost even predates the independence. What I can assure you is that this government is determined to resolve the issue. This government is determined to take necessary steps to find a definite end to this issue. It’s about containment it’s about accommodation. It’s about understanding. There will be farmers. There will be herdsmen. They must live together.
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