Sept. 23, 2021

The minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has said those criticising the Buhari Administration for borrowing are insincere.

According to the Minister who was speaking at at the town hall meeting on vandalisation of power and telecoms infrastructure in Borno on Thursday, noted that the Federal Government was not borrowing for recurrent expenditure or to pay salaries but to build world class infrastructure that will benefit generations of Nigerians.

“And we have a lot to show for the loans we have taken. Today, the standard-gauge rail lines between Lagos and Ibadan as well as Abuja and Kaduna are running well”.

“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”.

“For example, in their time, they claimed to have spent billions of Naira in building
infrastructure but, as one can see, their infrastructure projects were only on paper. Today, we are still saddled with looking for resources to build the same infrastructure for which they claimed to have allocated huge resources. We will not be deterred by the antics of those who believe they can play politics with everything”.

Mohammed added, “This is the second time we are holding a Town Hall meeting in Maiduguri since we launched the Town Hall Meeting programme in Lagos on April 25th 2016. Just like during the first town hall meeting we held here on February 5th 2018 on security. This is the third and final edition of the three-series town hall meeting which we have dedicated to addressing the wanton destruction of public infrastructure”.

“I must confess that, based on the two town hall meetings I listed above, the situation regarding the wanton destruction of public infrastructure is worse than we had imagined. For example, we were told that it would cost the Federal Government 3.8 billion Naira to repair just four bridges that were damaged by vandals and petrol-laden tankers. That’s a huge amount that could have been used to build new infrastructure”.

He added that it is common knowledge that massive infrastructure deficit is among the challenges facing the country. “This is why the Muhammadu Buhari Administration has deliberately adopted an inclusive infrastructure provisioning framework that spreads to all sections of the country”.

“Despite a drastic drop in revenues and competing priorities, especially that of battling insecurity, the federal government has invested heavily in providing new infrastructure, as well as reconstructing and rehabilitating existing ones”.

He noted with regret that in recent times laudable efforts of the government are being thwarted by some unpatriotic citizens through wanton destruction of critical infrastructure, thereby depriving the greater citizenry – for whose benefits these projects and services are provided – from enjoying them.

“Railway tracks are being subjected to wanton vandalism, bridge railings are being removed, manhole covers are being pilfered, and so are critical aviation, power and telecommunications infrastructure”.

“The consequences of such unpatriotic action and behaviour, aside endangering the lives of fellow innocent citizens, include the toll it takes on the government’s limited revenue to replace, rehabilitate or totally reconstruct such destroyed infrastructure”, he said.

Report by: Theresa Igata