The All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday unfolded its power agenda should it presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, be elected.
The party plans to generate at least 20,000 megawatts (mw) of electricity in four years to surpass Nigeria’s consumption level of around 15, 000mw.
In a statement, the party’s Presidential Campaign Organisation (APCPCO) expressed dismay that the Federal Government under President Goodluck Jonathan had only added 1.400mw to the national grid in four years.
The statement by Mallam Garba Shehu, the spokesman of the campaign, quoted Gen. Buhari as saying that while he will not run a witch hunt government, he will not hesitate to deal decisively with cases of impunity and corruption. No probe of any government official, he added.
The statement also quoted Gen. Buhari as saying he is passionately concerned about the sorry conditions of our armed forces today who, despite huge budgetary allocations, have failed to effectively deal with manifest security threats, including the Boko Haram terrorism.
“What he said at every given opportunity is that he is keenly interested in knowing what has gone wrong, if any, with the army that he knew. When he has access to them as Commander-in-Chief, he will like to hear from his commanders what problems they are dealing with so that they can be solved,” Shehu said.
“In a democracy such as ours, all institutions of government, including the armed forces, are accountable. No country can achieve results in its counter-terrorism efforts when there is no transparency in the management of huge resources for the purpose. He (Gen. Buhari) will reinvigorate the armed forces and restore their rapidly evaporating morale,” he said.
The APC Campaign Organisation accused the PDP of wasting billions of naira on non existent power, managing to add a yearly average of 87 megawatts of electricity, showing a massive failure to substantially raise generation and distribution of electric power despite promises and cash infusion of between $16 billion and $20 billion.
Shehu said “nearly 16 years of PDP administration gave this country a miserly addition of 1,400 Mega Watts against the expenditure of more than $16 billion. That translates to 18.5 MW per annum”.
He noted that “this abysmal power production and distribution, with its attendant socio-economic implications, is the most irresponsible thing a government can do to its people.
It explained that the PDP has shown an “appalling lack of capacity to deal with just any problem confronting this country and the lack of vision and commitment to dealing with electricity supply was just one of the myriads of the others begging for attention.”
“The only conclusion to draw from this is that the PDP is more interested in feathering the nest of importers of generators than in the wellbeing of Nigerian citizens and their businesses.”
The organisation accused President Jonathan of massive corruption in the country’s agricultural sector, saying “President Jonathan has failed woefully in the agricultural sector, and all the self-praise of the administration on agriculture is simply a ruse”.
It maintained that whereas President Jonathan had promised in 2010 to make Nigeria self-sufficient in rice and wheat production by 2015, “the grim reality on the ground today is that Nigeria emerged as the world’s highest importer of rice in 2015, and a whopping $11 billion is spent annually by Nigeria to import rice, wheat, sugar and fish.”
The statement added that according to the former Acting Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Dr. Sarah Alade, Nigeria as at 2014 spends $4 billion on rice importation – that is about N600 billion annually on the importation of 2.1 million metric tonnes of milled rice.
“This is after the Federal Government had approached the China Exim Bank for a loan of $1.2 billion for the financing of 100 large-scale rice processing plants with a total capacity of 2.1 million metric tonnes.
“The troubling truth today is that Nigeria is nothing close to self-sufficiency in rice production and what we have at hand is a close web of corruption where government cronies stumble over each other to get import licences for rice.”
“According to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, Nigeria’s wheat consumption as at year 2000 was about two million metric tonnes. But, by 2010, wheat importation to the country had risen to four million metric tonnes and Nigeria spends N635 billion annually on wheat importation.
“Five years into the Jonathan administration, Nigeria spends even more than we did in 2010 to import wheat; yet the government continues to brandish false achievements in the agricultural sector – a situation that is completely at variance with what President Jonathan promised Nigerians in 2010, saying that his government would make Nigeria save N635 billion annually on rice and wheat importation.”
The statement also faulted the government’s claim that local farmers now have unhindered access to fertiliser through the Growth Enhancement Scheme and described as “excessively labourious and technically difficult for the farmers to work through” are two bags of fertilizer throughout the entire farming season, “and government has not come out in one instance to tell Nigerians how much it receives as grants on fertiliser distribution to farmers from donor agencies.
“The government will want to give us the impression that fertiliser is being given to farmers free of charge. But we know that what subsists is a 50 per cent subsidy per bag of fertiliser. Our farmers are being shortchanged under this so-called e-wallet arrangement because of lack of transparency.
“We may be looking at another subsidy scam over fertilizer unless the Jonathan administration comes out clean to tell us how much it has received as grants over fertiliser and how it comes about the 50 per cent subsidy per bag of fertilizer.”
While dismissing President Jonathan’s claims of achievement in the agricultural sector, the organisation said that “throughout the periods preceding the Jonathan’s administration, the contribution of agriculture to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was at 7 per cent, while under the so-called transformation agenda of President Jonathan, agriculture’s contribution to the GDP has been consistent at 5 per cent – an all time low.
“In any case, food commodities are items Nigerians buy on a daily basis. If the Jonathan administration was sincere with the statistics it reels out on agriculture, why would the government buy pages of newspaper advertorials and TV commercials to force bitter falsehood of its achievements down the throats of Nigerians? The Jonathan administration has failed woefully in its agricultural policies and the facts are self-evident out there at those food stalls in our markets.
“In 2015, Nigerians know they spend far more to buy food than they did in 2010. That reality, in itself, is President Jonathan’s scorecard in agriculture.”
