Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, on Friday in Abuja, said the massive infrastructure projects undertaken by the Buhari-led administration, despite meagre resources, are the major dividing line between the All Progressives Congress and the main opposition, Peoples Democratic Party.
This came after he said the main opposition cannot be a better alternative to the APC.
Speaking during the Pre-Convention conference of the APC held at the Shehu Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, the Minister argued that the infrastructural milestones recorded under the Buhari administration since 2015 far outshine the progress made in the 16 years the PDP held central power.
According to him, “When we came in, N18bn was our budget for the Ministry of Works. For all Nigeria’s roads. That was less than the budget of my state in 2015. This tells you the attitude of the preceding government towards infrastructure. So, if you budget N18bn for roads and a new government that has less, is budgeting N500bn for the same roads, are those two parties the same?
“The APC and the PDP are not the same. We have different ideologies. Our attitude to spending money is better as it aims towards changing the lives of Nigerians positively. No matter the problem that Nigeria has, the umbrella is not the solution to the problems because what are those problems? Whether it is oil theft, bombing, pipelines vandalisation, they all started under their watch.”
Fashola stated that there are no fewer than 790 projects nationwide, in addition to 1,101 contract awards to ensure the construction of roads, houses and maintenance of federal secretariat complexes spread across the country.
He added: “We have solved all the big problems. We are confronting the major problems in Nigeria on infrastructure. The Lagos-Ibadan expressway, the Second Niger Bridge, Apapa-Oshodi, Abuja-Kaduna-Kano expressway, all of these problems that seemed to defy solutions, the Buhari’s APC-led government has confronted them in collaboration with states governments, we are finding a solution to them. Many of them would be completed this year or before the end of this administration.”
Also speaking was the Ekiti State governor and Co-Chairman of the Pre-Convention Committee, Kayode Fayemi, who blamed the main opposition for undoing the progress made in his first term in office.
Fayemi said, “That is why I said to you that there is a huge difference between the PDP and the APC. That’s why I hate to hear that all parties are the same. I can tell you with our own experience in Ekiti and you may also see that in other states where we (APC) are in control.
“Coming into office in 2018, talking specifically about Ekiti State, in fact, let me go back to 2014 when I left, Ekiti had the lowest out-of-school children percentage in the entire country. But by the time I returned in 2018, we had dropped back to the highest out-of-school children in the South-West zone.
“Because when I came back to the office in 2018, children were being charged a levy for going to school. Fees were being introduced from primary to secondary schools in Ekiti State. And all of the things we were doing before I left, payment of WAEC, JAMB, free education right up to secondary school, all of that had disappeared. And parents who were unable to afford to send their kids to school had their wards dropped out of school. We’ve reversed this and as I speak to you, we’ve had 80,000 increases in the enrolment of kids in primary school in the State.”
On his part, the Chairman of the Pre-Convention Committee and Governor of Borno State, Prof. Babagana Zulum, noted that the security situation in the North-East has greatly improved.
Drawing connections between insecurity and development, the governor said none of the local government areas in the state is under the Boko Haram insurgency group in line with the APC manifesto to tackle insecurity in the country.
He, however, noted that more still needs to be done to resettle millions of people displaced by the 12-year insurgency.
In her remarks, Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, said the Buhari regime’s social investment programme has made Nigeria the nation with the fastest growing social investment programme in the world. She also revealed that the economy is now diversified due to various economic intervention strategies introduced by the Buhari-led government.
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