By Olusegun Olanrewaju
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, and the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, yesterday took the time off their busy schedules to trade words over alleged plagiarising of the economic document by the latter.
Mohammed kick-started the crossfire when he said sections of the economic blueprint slated for Atiku to execute if he eventually makes it to the presidency were a rehash of President Buhari’s policies.
Specifically, the information minister said the promise by former vice-president, Atiku, to ‘break the jinx’ in infrastructure financing, if elected president in 2023, is worn, “because President Muhammadu Buhari had long done so”.
At a media briefing yesterday in Abuja, the minister said the recent economic blueprint unveiled by Atiku, the opposition PDP presidential candidate in the 2023 elections was a product of President Buhari’s policies.
“We state unequivocally that the worst jinx in infrastructure financing was the PDP administration from 1999 to 2015.
“Indeed, the Buhari administration has long broken that jinx, leveraging on such innovative schemes as the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF), Sukuk, and the Road Infrastructure Tax Credit Scheme (RITCS),” he said
According to the minister, the PIDF is being used to finance the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, 2nd Niger Bridge, and the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano road, while Sukuk has delivered a total of 1,881 kilometres of roads between 2017 and 2020.
He said the RITCS was used for the construction and rehabilitation of the Lokoja-Obajana-Kabba-Ilorin road, reconstruction of Apapa Wharf road, construction of Apapa-Oworonsoki-Ojota road, and the Bonny-Bodo road with a bridge.
Mohammed said the NNPC-funded part of the RITCS was also delivering nine roads in North-Central, three in North-East, two in North-West, two in South-East, three in South-South, and two in the South-West, for a total of 1,804 kilometres of roads.
He said the Buhari administration’s “warm handshake’’ with the private sector had delivered and was delivering an unprecedented number of projects.
The projects according to the minister, included, the 650,000bpd Dangote Refinery, Dangote Fertilizer plant, Lekki Deep Sea Port, BUA Cement, the 5,000bpd Waltersmith Modular Refinery in Imo State, and the 2,500bpd Duport Modular Refinery/Energy Park in Edo State.
On power, the minister said Atiku’s promise to propose legislation to, among others, give states the power to generate, transmit and distribute electricity, was also not new.
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Mohammed said, contrary to Atiku’s position, the Federal Government’s investments in additional generation capacity were not futile and had consideration for the complementary transmission and distribution infrastructure.
He said the Nigeria-Siemens partnership consummated in 2019 to improve “the seemingly-intractable power sector on which the PDP frittered more than 16 billion dollars to procure nothing but darkness would be a game changer.
Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Organisation yesterday dismissed claims by Mohammed that the party’s presidential candidate, Atiku, plagiarised Buhari’s economic blueprint as his policy document.
The PDP campaign also observed that the achievements listed by the minister were a poor attempt to turn the truth on its head.
It said, “While the minister was making a barren attempt to catalogue perceived achievements of the current APC administration, he did the unbelievable by claiming that the policy documents and proposals espoused by His Excellency Atiku Abubakar, our presidential candidate, are the version of the economic blueprint of the APC.
“That is a tsunami of a lie! To begin with, it has been openly acknowledged that this current administration came into power without a single sheet of paper of what could be called a policy document.
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“Nigerians are aware that in both 2015 and 2019, it took the APC six months and three months, respectively, to constitute a cabinet.
“Perhaps the minister might be interested in telling Nigerians if it is also part of the APC manifesto to foot drag in forming a government.
“It is on record that the first economic recession that the country experienced in 2016, which happens to be our worst economic decline in thirty years, happened primarily because the APC administration applied what can be called a catch-up strategy to the early signals of the recession.
“That is why to this day, Nigerians are more agreeable to the fact that the tenure of the APC has been nothing but a sheer waste of time, all thanks to the catch-up economic strategy of the ruling party that has left the people more malnourished, sick and disillusioned.”
The PDP Campaign noted that the poor records of the APC in the areas of economic management, job creation, education, security, and in virtually all spheres of our national life is the reason why there is a lot of anxiety about the 2023 general election.
According to the statement, it needs to be stressed that “next year’s election will be a referendum on the APC and it is not in doubt that the ruling party in Nigeria will present a global case study of how a political party can lose popular goodwill within a short period.
It pointed out that trying to associate the Atiku policy plans with the failed policies of the APC is the comical height of Minister Lai Mohammed’s aversion to the truth.
It also said it was contempt not just against the PDP and our presidential candidate, but also for the whole nation. Lai Mohammed must apologize to Nigerians for such an insensitive onslaught against truth in broad daylight.
