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PressRoom
Guest
President Buhari addressed the Nation on May 29, Nigeria's Democracy. It is exactly one year the ex-general assumed civilian rule in the continent's most populous nation. Buhari touched on many issues in his speech, below are some of the key points in his speech.
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- It has been a year of triumph, consolidation, pains and achievements. Despite the many years of hardship and disappointment the people of this nation have proved inherently good, industrious tolerant, patient and generous.
2. Our problems as a government are like that of a farmer who in a good season harvests ten bags of produce. The proceeds enable him to get by for rest of the year. However, this year he could only manage 3 bags from his farm. He must now think of other ways to make ends meet.
- 3.On the economy, in particular foreign exchange and fuel shortages, our plan is to save foreign exchange by fast tracking repair of the refineries and producing most of our fuel requirements at home.
4. We resolved to keep the naira steady, as in the past, devaluation had done dreadful harm to the Nigerian economy.
5. I support the monetary authority’s decision to ensure alignment between monetary policy and fiscal policy. We shall keep a close look on how the recent measures affect the naira and the economy. But we cannot get away from the fact that a strong currency is predicated on a strong economy.
6. And a strong economy pre-supposes an industrial productive base and a steady export market. The measures we must take, may lead to hardships. The problems Nigerians have faced over the last year have been many and varied. But the real challenge for this government has been reconstructing the spine of the Nigerian state.
7. An important first step has been to get our housekeeping right. So we have reduced the extravagant spending of the past. We started boldly with the treasury single account, stopping the leakages in publicexpenditure.
8. We then identified forty-three thousand ghost workers through the integrated payroll and personal information system. That represents pay packets totaling N4.2 billion stolen every month. In addition, we will save twenty-three billion per annum from official travelling and sitting allowances alone.
9. In all my years as a public servant, I have never come across the practice of padding budgets. I am glad to tell you now we not only have a budget, but more importantly, we have a budget process that is more transparent, more inclusive and more closely tied to our development priorities than in the recent past.
10. We have, therefore, delivered significant milestones on security, corruption and the economy.
11. In respect of the economy, I would like to directly address you on the very painful but inevitable decisions we had to make in the last few weeks specifically on the pump price of fuel and the more flexible exchange rate policy announced by the central bank. It is even more painful for me that a major producer of crude oil with four refineries that once exported refined products is today having to import all of its domestic needs. This is what corruption and mismanagement has done to us and that is why we must fight these ills.
12. As part of the foundation of the new economy we have had to reform how fuel prices had traditionally been fixed. This step was taken only after protracted consideration of its pros and cons. After comprehensive investigation my advisers and i concluded that the mechanism was unsustainable.
13. We are also engaged in makingrecoveries of stolen assets some of which are in different jurisdictions. The processes of recovery can be tedious and time consuming, but today i can confirm that thus far: significant amount of assets have been recovered.
14. On the Niger delta, we are committed to implementing the United Nations environment programme report and are advancing clean-up operations. I believe the way forward is to take a sustainable approach to address the issues that affect the delta communities.
15. The recent spate of attacks by militants disrupting oil and power installations will not distract us from engaging leaders in the region in addressing niger delta problems. If the militants and vandals are testing our resolve, they are much mistaken. We shall apprehend the perpetrators and their sponsors and bring them to justice.
16. The economic misfortunewe are experiencing in the shape of very low oil prices has provided us with an opportunity to restructure our economy and diversify. We are in the process of promoting agriculture, livestocks, exploiting our solid mineral resources and expanding our industrial and manufacturing base.
17. Central bank of Nigeria will offer more fiscal incentives for business that prove capable of manufacturing products that are internationally competitive. We remain committed to reforming the regulatory framework, for investors by improving the ease of doing business in Nigeria.