Power, roads, railways gulp $9bn in 2 years, says Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari said his administration has spent $9 billion on develop power, roads and railways infrastructures in the country in the last 2 years.

The President made the disclosure while declaring open the 61st meeting of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and Commission for AFRICA (CAF) on Monday in Abuja.

The amount is about N2.75 trillion using official exchange rate of N305 to $1.

Buhari said the effort was part of his resolve to diversify the nation’s economy away from the oil sector through the development of agriculture, solid minerals and tourism.

President Buhari, who was represented by the Secretary of the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, said the current administration was deploying massive investment into infrastructural development.

“We are making steady efforts to diversify the economy through agriculture, solid minerals development and tourism. We are also investing heavily in infrastructure to promote tourism.

“This administration has injected about $9 billion to strengthen its investment in power, roads and railways in the past two years.

“The government is also investing in the social investment programme to promote human capital development, which has benefitted over nine million people.

“These programmes include our home-grown school feeding programme that is providing one meal a day to 7.4 million pupils in 22 states of the federation,” Buhari said.

He added: “There is also the Conditional Cash Transfer under which some 297,973 poor homes are receiving N5,000 monthly.

“The government is also providing public safety and security to all Nigerians, investors and tourists. Government is also investing a lot of resources in building the inventory of equipment and capacity of security agencies to keep the country safe.”

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Also speaking, Minister of Information and Culture, Albania Lai Mohammed, who also confirmed the amount spent by the government, noted the importance of infrastructure to the development of the tourism sector.

According to him, “On our part, as a country, we are doing everything possible to move the tourism sector into the mainstream of the economy.

“Realizing that modern infrastructure is critical to tourism development, we are investing heavily in the development of infrastructure. In the last two years alone, we have spent an unprecedented $9 billion to build roads, standard railways and power,” the minister said.

“The investment is showing, as we have raised our power generation from 2,690MW to 7,000MW, while road construction is going on in every of the country’s 36 states,” he said.

 

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