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Nigeria’s exit from recession, evidence Buhari is working –Minister Lai

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What PDP should do next to show it has genuinely repented –Lai

Information and Culture Minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has lauded President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration and said that its hard work led to Nigeria exiting recession.

He also said that the Buhari-led Federal Government is working and that the results are showing in the various sectors of the economy.
A statement by the Special Assistant to the minister, Segun Adeyemi, quoted Mohammed as making this claim at the 4th Annual Conference of the Association of Communication Scholars and Professionals of Nigeria (ACSPN) in Kano on Wednesday.

And contrary to doubts over the claims of Nigeria exiting recession, the Information Minister insisted that hard work led to the development, noting, that pulling Nigeria out of recession was not by accident.

He said, “Taking Nigeria out of recession did not happen by accident. It is the culmination of months of hard work by the Administration and fidelity to its well-articulated economic policies, especially the Strategic Implementation Economic Recovery (2016) and the Growth Plan (ERGP) that was launched on 5th April, 2017.”

Alhaji Mohammed listed some of the ”incrementally-positive steps” that got Nigeria out of recession as including the reversal of the consistent slowdown since 2014 to a level where the GDP finally grew by 0.55 per cent in the second quarter of 2017

”This positive growth is attributable to both the oil and non-oil sectors of the economy. Growth in the oil sector, which has been negative since Q4 2015, was positive in Q2 2017. It rose by 1.64% as compared to -15.60 in Q1 2017, an increase of up to 17 percentage points.
”The non-oil sector grew by 0.45% in Q2 2017, a second successive quarterly growth after growing 0.72 per cent in Q1 2017. In particular, improvement in the non-oil sector was driven principally by strong growth in agriculture and solid minerals sector, and reversal in the previous contraction of the manufacturing and construction sector. This shows that the government’s economic diversification programme is working,” he said.

The Minister listed other positive developments as a fall in the inflation rate from 18 per cent to 16 per cent as of July 2017; the rise in exports, coupled with a decrease in imports, which brought the country’s trade balance to N719.4 billion, up from N671.3 billion; increase in capital inflow that brought the total value of capital imported into Nigeria in the second quarter of 2017 to $1,792.3 million, representing a growth of 95.02 percent; increase in foreign reserves to a 30-month high of $31.8 billion in July 2017; and appreciation in exchange rate from N520/$ as at 20 February 2017 to N362/$ as at 17th August 2017.

Read also: Nigeria still in real recession, Atiku says

He also listed some of the various impactful programmes of the Administration as including the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, which today feeds 3,065,000 pupils in 14 states of the Federation pupils and has employed 36,000 Cooks across the country; the Conditional Cash Transfer that has seen about over 30,000 households benefit from the N5,000 monthly stipend; the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme under which about 120,000 people have benefited from the cooperative loans; and the N-power that has employed 200,000 people.

He said the high food prices are being addressed with appropriate monetary, fiscal and trade policies, as stated in the ERGP.
Alhaji Mohammed reiterated his earlier statement that the purveyors of hate speech, fake news and disinformation are working hard to obliterate the glaring achievements of the administration.

He said, “To naysayers, these positive developments do not constitute news. That’s why they make up their own fake news, and engage in disinformation and hate speech. They believe that by seeking to overwhelm the polity with fake news, disinformation and hate speech, they can easily obliterate the glaring achievements of the Buhari Administration. We must not allow them to dominate the media space.”

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0 Comments

  1. Abeni Adebisi

    September 7, 2017 at 10:56 am

    Let’s give PMB’s administration the credit advice Lai Mohammed has rightly said. Taking a country out of recession requires a lot of hard work.

  2. Animashaun Ayodeji

    September 7, 2017 at 11:05 am

    What nonsense is Lai Mohammed saying? It is Buhari’s responsibility to solve all problems in Nigeria. He deserves no accolade for getting Nigeria out of the life-threatening recession.

    • Balarabe musa

      September 7, 2017 at 11:07 am

      Be grateful, you think it’s easy to overcome recession, people like you don’t grow in life because you lack appreciating spirit.

  3. Balarabe musa

    September 7, 2017 at 11:06 am

    Sai baba buhari is man of his words, he has brought change to the country. Just shortly after his return from the UK, Nigeria jumps out of recession. Am happy for a better life that awaits me

  4. yanju omotodun

    September 7, 2017 at 11:24 am

    They have done well but I doubt if they have been paying #5000 stipend as social security to Nigerians as they claimed

    • seyi jelili

      September 7, 2017 at 11:59 am

      If they had not been paying, they wont have said it

  5. Anita Kingsley

    September 7, 2017 at 11:29 am

    As far as I’m concerned, Buhari didn’t do anything to overcome Nigeria’s recession. The recession was artificially caused by Buhari and his people just to discredit PDP, now they’ve decided to remove the “hold” they placed on Nigeria’s economy and people are praising them, the APC government shouldn’t be praised for anything!

  6. seyi jelili

    September 7, 2017 at 11:57 am

    All glory belong to God, it’s prayer that trigger us out of recession

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