My only regret as Buhari's minister is this - Lai Mohammed reveals

By NAN

Nigerians have failed to appreciate that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari is doing so much with little resources, Information and Culture minister, Lai Mohammed said at a NAN special forum Abuja.

Lai Mohammed, Minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed (Photo Credit: Twitter)

Mr. Mohammed said with dwindling resources, no government in the history of Nigeria had implemented programmes alleviating poverty among women and vulnerable groups as well as created jobs for the youths as the Buhari administration had done.

The minister said his regret is that some Nigerians have failed to appreciate the efforts of the government but keep celebrating negative developments.

“My regret in this government is that Nigerians have failed to appreciate that the government is doing much more with much less.

“2010 to 2014 crude oil was selling from 100 dollars to 140 dollars per barrel, but the highest we have sold since we came in is 60 dollars.

“Sometimes at the peak of COVID-19 pandemic, we were even paying for storage because nobody wanted to take our crude.

“With the drop in revenues and security challenges this government has not retrenched one person but put in place programmes to cushion the effects of the pandemic,’’ he said.

The minister said Nigerians are not giving credit to various intervention programmes of the government.

He mentioned programmes like school feeding programme, as providing free meals to 12.8 million school children daily. He also said the conditional cash transfer programme, funded by the World Bank has paid 5,000 to vulnerable Nigerians.

Mr. Mohammed also said the MSME survival fund has been rolled out to provide payroll support for small businesses experiencing shocks due to COVID-19. He further mentioned the N75 billion national youth investment fund.

The minister however failed to provide verifiable data on how many ordinary Nigerians have benefited from these programmes.

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