Alhaji Lai Mohammed Marks Buhari’s First Anniversary Second Term (Read More)

Full press Conference by the HMIC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, To Mark The First Anniversary (Second Term) of The Buhari Administration.

“1st Anniversary (2nd Term) of @MBuhari Administration: A Year of Momentous Change:

Being The Text of The Press Conference Addressed By The HMIC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, To Mark The First Anniversary (Second Term) of The Buhari Administration….in Abuja on Friday, 29 May 2020.

Good morning gentlemen, and thank you for honouring our invitation to this press conference. It’s been a while. Of course, the #Covid19 pandemic has left us all either locked down or engaging in social distancing and avoiding mass gathering, as part of the overall safety and survival strategy in the face of the virulent virus that has taken the world by storm. I urge you all to continue to stay safe.

As you are all aware, today marks the first anniversary of the second term of the Administration of President @MBuhari. The entire media space in the country, and elsewhere around the world, has been taken over by the news of the #Covid19 pandemic.

But we must also not lose sight of the fact that life continues, and that – despite devoting huge time and resources to combat the pandemic – the government has continued to function.

3.  Gentlemen, the past one year has been momentous for Nigeria, as the President has taken some actions, mostly bold and highly visionary, that have now put Nigeria on an irreversible road to sustainable development.

Never in the history of Nigeria have so many positive steps been taken in so short a time as Mr. President has done in the past one year.

POWER SUPPLY

4.  Top on the list is power, or electricity if you wish. It will be an understatement to say that inadequate power supply, hallmarked by regularly blackouts, has stifled Nigeria’s economic development.

It is perhaps the single most formidable obstacle to the country’s economic development. But, following an agreement with German company Siemens in July 2019 to boost power supply in Nigeria, the stage is set for the perennial power problem to become a thing of the past.

Under the three-phase agreement, Nigerians will enjoy 7,000 megawatts of reliable power supply by the end of 2021 (phase 1), 11,000 megawatts by the end of 2023 (phase 2) and 25,000 megawatts in the third phase.

To put things in perspective, Nigeria’s current power generation capacity is more than 13,000 megawatts, but only an average of 3,400 megawatts reliably reach consumers.

In essence, the current amount of power that reaches consumers will more than double by the end of next year. In addition, this will create thousands of jobs and wil leapfrog the country into the next level of industrial and social development.

  This is how Mr. President sums up the agreement: “Our goal is simply to deliver electricity to Nigerian businesses and homes. My challenge to Siemens, our partner investors in the distribution companies,

the Transmission Company of Nigeria and the electricity regulator, is to work hard to achieve 7,000 megawatts of reliable power supply by 2021 and 11,000 megawatts by 2023 – in phases 1 and 2 respectively.

After these transmission and distribution system bottlenecks have been fixed, we will seek – in the third and final phase – to drive generation capacity and overall grid capacity to 25,000 megawatts.”

BORDER DRILL/EXERCISE SWIFT RESPONSE

  1.   Shortly after Mr. President took a definitive step to ensure stable power supply for Nigeria in the shortest possible time, he also took another bold step to put Nigeria on the path to food sufficiency”.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.