Nigerians have been complaining about the biting economic situation in the country and with the vice president as the chairman of the National Economic Council, what do you think is responsible for this and what is the government doing to address it?
The particular situation of an economy at any given time is an accumulation of some previous decisions, events, actions and inaction of the past. What has become clear since President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration got into office is that we are addressing some of the more fundamental aspects of the Nigerian economy. By that, I mean in the last four years, we have seen the diversification of the economy like never before. The farmers will tell you that since we came in, things have changed. They said there were five million farmers then and now they are about 12 million. It is not my own claim, they said it themselves. And you can see with the Anchor Borrowers Programme; it has empowered over one million farmers to whom we give very affordable loans. This will be taken to the Next Level. And we are moving steadily into the diversification of the economy.
Experts have said that if agricultural development is encouraged, it could leverage on oil, job creation and national development, how far has government gone in this direction?
In the area of importation of rice where we used to spend over $5 million daily on rice import, the situation has changed due largely to the deliberate policy of the Federal Government in agricultural production, especially in prioritizing local rice production with the target to attain self-sufficiency. The government is very serious about diversification this is because some of the problems we have are as a result of the over-dependency on oil. When oil goes down, everything takes a tailspin. We came in and took serious attention to the diversification of the economy.
But there are still unemployment and infrastructural issues; do you think the government has done enough in these areas?
We are spending a lot more on infrastructure at a time when we have a lot less. When oil was sold for over $100 in the international market, we spent only about 10 to 12 per cent on capital. But we have started spending not less than 30 per cent on capital so that in every state today, there is an ongoing road project. We are building rail across the nation. The point is that these will not only set a stage for economic growth but it will also create jobs as we go along. We have spent more on infrastructure than what was spent in the decades before we came here. Our last two budgets recorded actual spend of over a trillion naira on infrastructure.
Aside from this, we have started the implementation of an ambitious Social Investment Programme including the N-Power where we provided post-secondary school job programmes in the entire country. We have hired over 500,000 unemployed graduates. We are feeding about 10 million pupils once daily. We have given affordable interest-free loans to over two million small scale traders across the country. The point is that the extent of the problem is that more than what we can immediately due to limited resources. But we are on the right path. No government has done more than what we have done on diversification, infrastructure and social investment. By the grace of God, we will do more to ramp up these programmes in the next four years.
Even though the economy of this country seems slow in growth, we just want Nigerians to be patient. We are looking at the private sector, we are meeting on a quarterly basis with those in different sectors to see what we can do to create a favourable environment for business to thrive so that local and foreign investments can come. We are currently sorting out the issues of licenses and permits, like visa on arrival, and we are doing a lot with technology. It is going to take a while for it to complement the economy effectively because of the damage that was there previously.
With all you have said, people who also follow the government’s programmes are fond of asking, ‹when will all these translate to putting food on the table of the average Nigerians› as many still cry of hunger? How will you answer them?
Food prices have actually gone down. If you look at the inflation figures, you will see that it is going down. The pupils we are feeding in public primary schools are also Nigerians. The 500,000 unemployed graduates in N-Power who are also Nigerians will tell you the impact of these policies on their every day lives. They are part of the average Nigerians on the streets whose lives have been changed. This was done such that they will have something to do before they get better, more permanent jobs. From 500,000, we are going to go to one million in the next iteration of N-Power. The over two million petty traders and small scale business owners we have given loans to are also Nigerians. All these social investment programmes are meant for Nigerians on the streets. And these Nigerians have the success stories to tell.
When you compare that to the extent of the problem we have and the number of Nigerians that are poor but we have only touched a part of it considering the direct and indirect beneficiaries. And yes, there is still a lot of work to be done but if you look at the figures empirically, you will see that we have done so much in four years better than what previous governments have done in the area of poverty alleviation. We will soon be releasing an empirical survey showing that about 70% of Nigerians support the progress so far recorded with the SIPs.
The TraderMoni generated a lot of controversies during the campaign for 2019 general election. Critics are of the opinion that giving N10,000 to petty traders seems too cheap, what’s your view on this?
If you go and ask them, over two million Nigerians who have benefited from this loan, they will tell you a different story. The petty traders whose stock is mostly valued at N3,000 or N2,000 and if they get N10,000, it is a significant change to their trade. And when they return the N10,000 which they are doing already, by the way, they get another N15,000. If they return the N15, 000, they get a fresh N20,000 and so on like that up to N100,000. You should go and ask them, they will tell you that the money is not insufficient. Those people sitting down doing armchair criticism should go out and ask them. A good percentage of them are returning the money today but a few ignorant people will be making noises over the place.
Those big guys who took loans in those big banks, we are still trying to get them to repay after several years and we are here talking about these petty traders. We have recorded over 60 per cent returns from these petty traders and they are getting more. I don’t know of any government that has touched the lives of the people like this government is doing and this is a fact that can be crosschecked.
