Buhari’s Independence Day speech, skirts around ASUU, scores self, high on refloating the economy, fighting corruption and insecurity.
By Emeka Alex Duru
Nigerians who had hoped that the President, Muhammadu Buhari, would use his speech on the 62nd Independence anniversary of the country to address the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike that has seen universities closed for Seven-and-half months, had their hopes dashed.
Rather than making emphatic statements on the resolution of the crisis, Buhari skirted over the issue, preferring a feeble appeal to the striking lecturers to return to the classroom while the government deals with their contending issues within the limits of the scarce resources available.
While claiming to be very pained by the recurring disruption to the tertiary education system, Buhari said his “administration has made appreciable progress in redressing these issues that have been lingering for over eleven years”.
He went on to claim appreciable success in refloating the economy fighting corruption and tackling the menace of insecurity. Buhari added that the interventionist programmes of the government have reached virtually all villages and localities in the country. “One of the areas where we have made significant progress is in the eradication of deeply entrenched corruption that permeates all facets of our national development”, Buhari said.
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The President stated that in order to address insecurity, the administration has worked methodically in reducing insurgency in the North East, militancy in the Niger Delta, ethnic and religious tensions in some sections of Nigeria along with other problems threatening the country.
He listed efforts of the administration to remove several decades of uncertainty for potential investors in the oil & gas sector, which he said, were actualised with the passage of the Petroleum Industry Act, 2021. The landmark legislation, Buhari said, created opportunities for foreign investments in addition to improving transparency in the management of the sector.
The President stressed that the administration has given the desired priority to the agricultural sector through a series of incentives to Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises that resulted in creating millions of jobs. In this regard, the President said the Central Bank of Nigeria has made interventions in a number of areas as well as the Anchor Borrowers Programme which had created the required leverages for Nigerians towards self-sufficiency in food and the necessary attraction for farming as a business.
“We are confronting current economic challenges such as debt burden, growing inflation, living standards and increasing unemployment accentuated by our growing youthful population. These problems are globally induced and we would continue to ensure that their negative effects are addressed in our policies”, Buhari added.
He informed that the administration has continued to accelerate the infrastructure development in the country through serviceable and transparent borrowing, improved capital inflow & increased revenue generation by expanding the tax bases and prudent management of investment proceeds in the Sovereign Wealth Fund.
He remarked that besides the emphasis on infrastructural development with its attendant opportunities for job creation, employment generation and subsequent poverty reduction, government’s focused intervention directly to Nigerians through the National Social Investment Programme is also yielding benefits.
According to Buhari: “There is hardly any ward, village or local government in Nigeria today that has not benefited from one of the following: N-Power, trader-moni, market moni, subsidized loans, business grants or Conditional Cash Transfers”.
The speech is the last from Buhari as the President.
