· Says president in full support of peaceful protests
CHIGOZIE AMADI
The presidency, yesterday, assured Nigerians of President Bola Tinubu’s commitment to putting the country on a sound economic footing, despite the myriad challenges inherited by his administration.
Media Adviser to the President, Ajuri Ngelale, who spoke during a live television interview programme, Politics on Sunday with Femi Akande on TVC, also declared that Tinubu, was not opposed to peaceful protests in the country.
Ngelale stated that although Nigerians were currently facing economic pressures and food crisis, the administration was doing a lot in the short, medium and long terms to change the situation.
He emphasised that development would ordinarily take time and Nigerians understood that there was no magic switch to instantly solve the country’s problems.
He reeled out the administration’s achievements to include single-digit interest rate credit facilities for over one million micro, small, and medium-scale enterprises, road reconstruction across the country, and seaport reconstruction.
The presidential spokesperson also mentioned the National Student Loan programme, Consumer Credit Programme, and the increase in national minimum wage, stressing that these initiatives would have a positive impact on the livelihoods of citizens.
Ngelale acknowledged that some of the efforts might not be immediately visible, but assured that the administration was working tirelessly to create a prosperous future for Nigeria.
He stated, “When the president sets out to build… right now you have over 300 roadways across all states of the federation being reconstructed and that is not including the super-highway from Lagos to Calabar that’s under construction, the Badagry to Sokoto highway and many others.
“Not to talk of $1 billion being right now expended on seaport reconstruction across the eastern and western seaports.
“There are a number of things that are going on now that create direct employment and set us up for a prosperous future, where our infrastructure actually supports the foreign direct investment drive that this president is aggressively pursuing.
“But it is also incumbent upon our administration, not just at the federal level, but obviously incumbent on the state and local levels, to ensure that whatever policies are being implemented to create fiscal space for households, that these things are actually done, that we don’t have any kind of administrative incompetence, that we don’t have unnecessary bureaucratic delays.
“The last point I would make on this is that when you look at the government right now we’ve rolled out the National Student Loan program, where you have over 100,000 beneficiaries, students who originally would not have been able to access institutions of higher learning, but are now able to do so, not just accessing the tuition, but accessing the logistics, accommodation, upkeep and all of that.
“If you look at the Consumer Credit Programme, if you’re looking at a scale of over one million Nigerians in the first year that would benefit from that program, these are things that take time ultimately to mature.”
Ngelale added, “There’s no question about the fact that there is a lot of work that has to be done and there’s a lot of work that is being done, some of which is not going to have the bells and whistles of TV cameras and nobody’s going to be sitting in the office, for example, of the CBN governor, as he’s doing his paperwork which leads to the full payoff of $7 billion worth of foreign exchange backlog.
“It has massive impact on investor confidence, it has massive impact on the medium term kind of monetary space in the country, but that’s not something that people are necessarily going to be dancing and celebrating about. So there’s a lot going on.
“I think the key thing for us is to recognise that the president has agreed that we are going to ensure that our states, and now by virtue of the president’s action with the institution of the suit that ultimately resulted in a Supreme Court judgement that has led to a local government financial autonomy, is going to ensure that the local governments now have the fiscal space they need to be able to truly deliver the dividends of democracy that our people require at that level.
“I think that is restructuring in practice. That is the kind of thing that Nigerians would need to give some time to see what the difference actually will translate into in terms of the impact on their livelihoods.”
The presidential spokesman also stated, “I think the other part of this is to recognise that it is under the leadership of this president, that we have had a 100 per cent increase in the national minimum wage and I think it will be difficult for everybody in the country to fully appreciate what it took in terms of the leadership of the president to get the private sector to agree in uniformity, with state governments and local governments, making sure that everybody’s on the same page with respect to the payment of a new national minimum wage, it’s not easy to achieve that, he achieved it.
“I think there are a lot of elements of what the president has done, that Nigerians truly do appreciate and truly do recognise as progressive. These are things that we’ve been in this democratic dispensation now for about 25 years, we have not seen some of the measures that this president has now put in place ever being put in place before.
“I think people have confidence, but I think it’s also fair to say that people are frustrated, people do feel they are buckling under this intense economic difficulty with respect to energy prices, food inflation and many of the other elements but what we are working hard in hand in hand with our people to communicate is that the trends are moving in the right direction.
“We are seeing revenues going up, we are seeing inflation growth stagnate into a descent. So we have come through the worst of it and this is what we’re communicating to our people and we will together with them get to the end of where the light is at the end of the tunnel.”
Shedding light on concerns raised by government on the protests planned for August 1-10, Ngelale said, “Let me be clear, we are not in office to dominate our people; we are here to serve them.”
He stated that Tinubu fully supported the right of Nigerians to protest peacefully, citing his own history as an activist fighting for democracy.
Ngelale condemned any internal voices suggesting that citizens should be prevented from protesting, saying, “No one in our administration has the authority to deny Nigerians their right to peaceful protest.”
He acknowledged fears surrounding potential protests, and made reference to credible intelligence that they could be hijacked, like was the case during the #EndSARS protests.
