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| Lai Mohammed (Photo Credit: The Nation) |
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Minister
of Information and Culture, has disclosed that the innovative measures
introduced by President Muhammadu
Buhari-Led Administration is presently yielding result.
Minister listed investment in people,
changing the business environment and building national infrastructure as some
of the areas in which the Administration has made a great impact. He said this
while speaking at the the 2018 ‘Africa Together Conference’ at
the University of Cambridge in the UK on Saturday.
He stated that the administration is addressing the need to create
opportunities for the country’s teeming youth population by it emphasis on
education and skills acquisitions.
He stated that about 800,000 cooks have been engaged, while a
readily available market have been made available as a result of the home grown
school feeding programme of the federal government.
”In my country, school enrolment is a
challenge we face. And one of the main culprits is malnutrition. Government has
stepped in: 8.2 million are being fed daily free meals in 45,000 schools. Not
only does this increase attendance and provide children with a – in some case
only – nutritious meal a day, it enhances learning efficacy in class and boosts
cognitive development over the long term,”Alhaji Mohammed said.
He added that the introduction of the N-power programme by the
federal government is ensuring that employment and vocational training for
graduates and others, access to loans for medium and small business as well as
conditional cash transfers to the most vulnerable members of the society.
”Much of our programme has honed-in on
business reform. Nigeria has moved up 24 places on the World Bank Ranking of
Ease of Doing Business index – putting it amongst the top 10 global reformers,
along with Zambia, Malawi and Djibouti. The two areas we have prioritised are
starting a business and access to credit.
”In Nigeria, registering a business used to
take months. Now it takes 24-48 hours. Unwrapping the bureaucracy and
streamlining processes encourage an uptick in new official enterprises. We have
introduced online registration, with features such as the electronic stamping
of documents. And to ensure this brings with it the maximum benefit, Micro,
Small and Medium Enterprises clinics have been deployed across a variety of
states to provide regulators a contact point with informal business and budding
entrepreneurs to clarify any issues,” Alhaji Mohammed said.
According to The Nation, the Minister told his audience that the
two most critical impediments against business, decent transport connections
and a reliable power supply, are also been tackled by ensuring better roads and
train networks, so that goods and services can be moved around more cheaply and
efficiently, and businesses can plan for the future, knowing they will not be
hampered by energy outages.
”For instance, Nigeria earmarks 30 per cent of its annual national
budgets for capital expenditure. That means 2.7 trillion Naira has gone towards
our infrastructure in the last 2 years -unprecedented in our history. Power
generation has climbed to 7000MW (from just over 2500MW), to which we hope to
add another 2000MW by the end of the year. We have also laid down thousands of
kilometres of road.
”Also, the Government has now signed a
concession agreement with an International Consortium led by General Electric.
This will breathe new life into the tracks, increasing capacity and speed. Not
only will this allow for goods and services to be moved around
cost-effectively, it will allow the prosperity of the nation to be more
equitably spread through increased connectivity,” he said, adding that the
government is also constructing a new standard-gauge railway.” he said.
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