Buhari’s Govt Lists 100 Achievements In 2021

The Federal Govern­ment on Thursday listed 100 major achievements of the Muhammadu Buhari admin­istration in 2021.

The Minister of Informa­tion and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, gave the list in Lagos at a media briefing to showcase the achievements of the administration during the outgoing year.

Mohammed said in spite of daunting challenges, the administration made tre­mendous progress in 2021 in fighting insecurity, growing the economy and reforming the oil and gas sector to spur more investments.

Mohammed said the Bu­hari government is emplac­ing world class infrastructure and providing social safety net for the poor and most vulnerable in the society.
He said the administration was equally taking advantage of the huge opportunities of­fered by the Information and Communications Technolo­gy sector.

Other areas in the listed achievements included min­ing, aviation, water supply scheme, agriculture, jobs cre­ation, immigration services, police reforms and foreign direct investments.

The minister noted that “success is not measured by the number of challeng­es you face, but by how you tackled the challenges.”

Mohammed said the Fed­eral Government will provide free school meals to 25 mil­lion children in the country by 2030 through its National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP).

He said the programme was at the moment provid­ing meals to nearly 10,000,000 school children nationwide.

“As you know, the pro­gramme is designed as an in­centive to boost school enrol­ment and improve nutrition of primary school pupils.

“The NHGSFP is also sustaining the impact of ag­ricultural and women entre­preneurs in communities to produce and provide a quali­ty meal daily to pupils at the basic education level.

“The programme has em­powered over 100,000 cooks and over 100,000 smallholder farmers in the local areas where the schools are located, while creating employment opportunities across sectors such as transportation and manufacturing.

“The programme is be­ing extended to children in non-conventional education­al settings so that they may access its benefits,” he said.

The minister also said that the Federal Government had continued to implement the National Social Investment Programmes.

He said on the directive of the president, the N-Pow­er had been expanded from 500,000 to one million benefi­ciaries.

According to him, the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) has also been restruc­tured and successfully regis­tered over 600,000 potential beneficiaries in all the 774 local government areas na­tionwide through collabo­rative partnership with the National Orientation Agency.

He said since inception till March 2021, a total of 1,676,799 eligible households across the country were ben­efiting from monthly N5,000 grant in the Conditional Cash Transfer programme.

The minister said the fig­ure included the one million urban poor who were includ­ed under the directive of the president to further expand the programme due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The minister reassured Nigerians that President Mu­hammadu Buhari will leave “a legacy of a safe, secure and prosperous nation.”

While thanking Nigerians for their support and perse­verance, he urged them not to relent in supporting the security forces, whom he said were making sacrifices to keep the country safe.

Mohammed noted that the Nigerian economy was on steady recovery path throughout 2021 in spite of unprecedented challenges faced by many countries around the world.

“As you are aware, gentle­men, many countries around the world face unprece­dented challenges, starting from 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and Ni­geria is no exception.

“The Nigerian economy was hit by the pandemic in mid-2020, and the economic disruptions led to a recession.

“The poor performance of the economy during the COVID-19 era affected output growth, trade, household wel­fare and livelihood.

“However, this led to a quick response by the Fed­eral Government with the rolling out of effective fiscal and monetary policies as well as health-related policies in­tended to curb the spread of the pandemic and mitigate the negative impact of the pandemic on the economy,” he said.

The minister said the poli­cies rolled out by the govern­ment had yielded consider­able results including growth in the nation’s Gross Domes­tic Product (GDP).

“The country’s domestic growth in the first three quar­ters of 2021 was positive, re­cording real GDP of 0.51 per­cent in Q1, 5.01 percent in Q2 and 4.03 percent in Q3 2021.

“This was an improve­ment from a declining per­formance in the first three quarters of 2020 (which led to economic recession) put at 1.87 percent in Q1, -6.10 per­cent in Q2 and -3.62 percent in Q3 2020.

“Nevertheless, the fourth quarter 2020 recorded a slight improvement of 0.11 percent, ushering in positive growth rates in the three quarters of 2021,” he said.

Mohammed said the steady improvement in growth over the last three quarters could be attribut­ed to government policies and strategies such as the Economic Sustainability Plan and the N500 billion COVID-19 Crisis Intervention Fund, among others.

In Foreign Trade, Moham­med said Nigeria witnessed dwindling performance in 2020, arising from trade restrictions on account of COVID-19 pandemic.

The minister, however, said that the country’s to­tal exports grew by 40.62%, which was N13.12 trillion in the first three quarters of 2021.

“Over the same period, crude oil export improved considerably at N10.03 tril­lion, compared to N6.92 tril­lion, showing a growth rate of 44.93 percent.

“Non-oil exports grew by 21.17 percent – from N1.19 tril­lion to N1.44 trillion over the same period.

“Inflation rate has contin­ued to decline on a year-on-year basis since April 2021 when 18.12 percent was re­corded.

“Looking at the trend, a declining rate was recorded from 17.93 percent in May to 17.01 percent in August, 15.99 percent in October and 15.40 percent November 2021.

“It is projected that proper implementation of the pro­posed 2022 budget of N17.13 trillion and Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper 2022-2024 are likely to im­prove the performance of the economy,” he said.

The minister noted that judicious implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act would improve oil produc­tion and sales stability.

He gave an assurance that relatively high oil pric­es would enhance revenue performance and budget implementation, while strengthening security would improve output growth of the economy.