The Presidency said yesterday that it was mischievous to paint a bleak, pessimistic and frequently inaccurate picture of the state of the nation and outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari’s leadership.
It was responding to an editorial by a national newspaper (not Daily Trust).
A statement by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu said, “In this post-election period of heightened tension and disinformation, they saw it fit to set the record straight.
“First let’s start with the one thing the editorial gets right: that President Buhari inherited an economy in disarray. Corruption ran rampant, oil prices were nose-diving and – astoundingly – an international terror cell, Boko Haram controlled territory the size of Belgium within our country’s borders.
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“That so-called country, the caliphate is unrecognizable from today’s Nigeria. Today, corruption is thrust out in the open by Buhari’s landmark whistleblowing policy, empowering Nigerians to report it without fear and seeing the repatriation of hundreds of millions of dollars stolen by corrupt politicians and stashed in banks abroad.
“Terrorists no longer hold any territory in Nigeria whatsoever, and their leaders have been neutralised by our security forces,” he said.
Shehu said Nigeria’s economy had equally witnessed growth.
According to him, “External reserves have maintained a healthy growth throughout these eight years. Within two years of the Buhari administration, exports more than doubled from the 2015 records. Agriculture exports grew 180.7% by 2017 above the value in 2015.”
The presidential spokesman added that the Buhari administration had bettered the life of many Nigerians.
“Two million poor and vulnerable Nigerian households that are currently benefiting from the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme, which pays a bimonthly stipend of N10,000 per household; the 355,000 vulnerable persons have received a special one-off grant of N20,000 each in the 36 states and the FCT; the beneficiaries of Nigeria’s micro-pension scheme which allows self-employed persons and persons working in organisations with less than 3 employees to save for the provision of pension at retirement or incapacitation.”
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