The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has
said the Buhari Administration is steadily transforming Nigeria through
innovative measures that are yielding positive results.
In a keynote address he delivered at the 2018 ‘Africa Together
Conference’ at the University of Cambridge in the UK over the weekend,
the 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 by focusing on education and skills acquisition,
the Administration is addressing the need to create opportunities for
the country’s teeming youth population.
”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 said the Home-Grown School Feeding programme has yielded other
results, including the employment of over 80,000 cooks and a ready-made
market for food crop farmers.
The Minister said skill shortages in the labour pool are
being addressed through several measures, including the four-pronged
N-Power programme that is providing 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.
He said the Administration is also changing the business environment
for good, focusing especially on removing the red tape that makes it
cumbersome for business and stifles innovation.
”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.
He noted that the challenge of access to credit is also being
frontally addressed by making it possible for MSMEs to register their
movable assets, such as vehicles and equipment, and use them as
collateral to raise loans and finance, thus removing the need for
traditional assets (such as real estate, offices and factories).
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% 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.