The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed revealed that despite challenges inherited by President Buhari’s administration, the President has steered the country in the right direction and returned the economy to the path of sustainable growth.
The Minister disclosed this in a meeting with the African Union Development Agency-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD), on Friday in Abuja.
The Minister also revealed that President Buhari’s style of governance is driven by experience, wisdom, tolerance and patience.
What the Minister said
“We came into government in 2015 and by the time we came to government, three things happened, the impact of which we did not know. The first is that by the time we assumed office in 2015, a huge part of the North East was under the effective occupation of Boko Haram.
“When we came in in 2015, the economy had virtually collapsed. Oil prices crashed from a high of about $120 per barrel to about $28 a barrel. Production went from about 2.1 million barrels per day to about half a million barrels a day. These were the challenges we faced on day one when we came in,” he said.
“While we can have some basic tenets of governance, governance is a bit peculiar to the locality, and the kind of challenges we face will determine to a large extent the mechanism we are going to use to resolve them.
“I look at Nigeria as an extremely interesting project, especially in the last six years. I think the kind of challenges we faced as a government coming in, in 2015 till today will challenge the most resourceful persons,” he further stated.
Lai Mohammed revealed that Buhari’s style of governance is driven by experience, wisdom, tolerance, patience and listening to all shades of opinion in his effort to chart a new course for the country that has been plagued by numerous challenges.
On the economic performance, Lai Mohammed said he is proud to say that FG is not just in the process of diversifying the economy, but has already diversified the economy citing the last report of the National Bureau of Statistics, which showed that while the non-oil economy did very well, the oil-related economy did poorly. He also added that the Federal Government has scaled up the fight against insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and other forms of criminality in the country.
