By Nanji Nandang
Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, says the Buhari – led Administration is taking loans in order to build world class infrastructure that will benefit future generations of Nigerians and reverse the massive infrastructure deficit in the country.
“Naysayers have recently ramp up their criticism of the Buhari Administration for borrowing. These critics are insincere. We are not borrowing for recurrent expenditure or to pay salaries. We are borrowing to build world class infrastructure that will benefit generations of Nigerians. And we have a lot to show for the loans we have taken,” the Minister said in Maiduguri, northeast part of the country, on Thursday, at a town hall meeting.
“Today, the standard-gauge rail lines between Lagos and Ibadan as well as Abuja and Kaduna are running well. Today, we have new airport terminals in Abuja, Kano, Lagos and Port Harcourt. Today, the Itakpe-Warri rail line that was abandoned for decades is running,” he added.
While decrying the drastic drop in revenues, competing priorities, and the battling insecurity, Mohammed said, the federal government has invested heavily in providing new infrastructure, as well as reconstructing and rehabilitating existing ones.
He said there are over 13,000km of federal roads currently under repair, rehabilitation and reconstruction, emphasizing that there is a road project in every state of the Federation.
“Today, we have started the countdown to when the 2nd Niger Bridge, which successive administrations have built only on paper, will be completed. The list of projects we are handling with the loans we obtained is long,” he said.
”It is an irony that those who are criticizing us today performed abysmally in terms of modernizing our infrastructure, even when they served at a time when our earnings were multiples of what we get today. Had they embarked on the kind of infrastructure development we are currently engaged in, perhaps there would have been no reason for us to borrow as much as we are doing now.
”We will not be deterred by the antics of those who believe they can play politics with everything,” the Minister said.
In response, Governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum, applauded the Minister for promoting participatory democracy through the town hall meeting series, which he described as a veritable platform for citizens’ engagement and public sensitization.
While commending President Mohammadu Buhari for coming to the rescue of the state by directing the NNPC to establish a gas power plant to service the citizens and the plan to set up a 150 megawatts solar energy plant in the state, Zulum said that Borno State had been in total darkness for about nine months due to the nefarious activities of the Boko Haram terrorists, who bombed high tension cables and other power infrastructure.
The town hall meeting was organised to address the vandalism of power and telecommunications infrastructure in the country.
