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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has expressed happiness over the partnership between President Bola Tinubu-led Federal Government and its United States of America (USA) counterpart in tackling insecurity in the country.
The ruling party who extolled President Tinubu’s virtues and what they described as his landmark achievements in Abuja on Thursday, argued that his administration has invested more resources in procuring arms, ammunition and retraining Nigerian security personnel.
Director General of The APC Progressives Institute (TPI), Mr. Lanre Adebayo, maintained that President Tinubu acted like a statesman and not a politician when he embarked on painful reforms, including petrol subsidy removal and floating of Naira as soon as he assumed office.
“Security is improving, although we still have challenges. Every nation has security challenges, but in terms of fighting bandits, the country has done very well. Collaboration with the US is yielding results, and the government has invested more resources in procuring arms, ammunition and retraining Nigerian security officers. We need to appreciate the men and officers of the Nigerian security forces for their contributions,” Adebayo said at the signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Jade and Jaydens Services Ltd and TPI, .
He further recalled that under the military government, the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) was a good example of a policy that failed, explaining that SAP failed because leaders always fear to confront issues that might temporarily affect their popularity.
His words: “I also remember during the Obasanjo period, the government spent billions of Naira to canvass for privatisation, removal of fuel subsidy and floating of Naira. At the end of the day, the government didn’t do anything about it. Again, for fear of the huge political cost that may entail.
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“President (Muhammadu) Buhari also tried. Same thing with President (Goodluck) Jonathan, but none of them was able to meaningfully confront a major strategic area of our economy, which is the consumption of the money we were making from oil and the money we were using to subsidise consumption through subsidised forex regime.
“And on May 29th 2023, President Tinubu courageously and boldly announced the removal of fuel subsidy. Some people said, well, it was too fatal that he should have avoided doing it because of the likely impact on the economy. The same thing on the removal of floating the denier.
“And you know, statesmen are always concerned about the long term impact of reforms, politicians are always concerned about winning and therefore always avoid taking painful decisions.
“President Tinubu, of course, we know his antecedent. He boldly removed the oil subsidy and the reason for that is this, for every dollar we spend on oil subsidy, we are consuming the money we made.”
Adebayo also claimed that before 2023, most state governors were borrowing money to pay salaries, arguing that today, there is no state government borrowing to pay salaries.
He added: “All state governors are embarking on massive infrastructure development. You may not agree on their emphasis, but the fact is that they have a lot more resources to work with. The same thing with local governments.
“What happened with removal of subsidy, therefore, is to remove money from consumption to investment, to production. That is what most sane leaders all over the world do. They free money from consumption to production.
“Of course, there was an immediate impact on prices, but as we have seen the last one year or thereabout even the prices of petroleum are already responding to the dynamics of the interplay of the free market system,” he told newsmen at the event.
Equally speaking, the leader of Progressive Local Government Chairmen Forum, and Chairman of Chanchaga local government, Minna, Mustapha Jibril, said that the President has started some reforms that the previous government has refused to delve into.
He noted that local government chairmen are the ones that would help them to know what is happening at the grassroots and what the people are facing.
According to him, “Though we have had some issues about insecurity in Niger, the response from the government has been encouraging. Some achievements have been recorded and some progress have been made and we need to ensure that we communicate those achievements clearly to the people.”
He assured of the forum’s support to ensure that the message about the government’s achievements is sent out loud and clear.
