The
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has said that the President
Muhammadu Buhari-led administration is on the right track and there is no
alternative to what it is doing.
The
minister stated this at a meeting with the members of staff of the Nigerian
Embassy in Madrid, Spain.
The
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the meeting was during the minister’s
two-day official visit to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation
(UNWTO).
“I
believe that we are on the right track, there will be some pains, but there is
no alternative to what we are doing,’’ he said.
Mr.
Mohammed said the administration had fulfilled its campaign promises to address
insecurity, fix the economy and fight corruption.
In
the area of security, the minister said that when Mr. Buhari came on board, 14
of the 20 Local Government Areas of Borno, four in Adamawa and three in Yobe
were under the sovereign authority of Boko Haram.
He
said that with proactive measures and soft diplomacy with neighbouring African
countries, the U.S., France and the G-8 had helped the country to “decisively
deal with Book Haram’’.
“Today,
all the major highways leading to Maiduguri are opened and about two months
ago, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) played a league match in Maiduguri
stadium,’’ he said.
On the
renewed agitations in the Niger-Delta region and parts of the South-East, the
minister reassured that the government would not marginalise any part of the
country, and assured that economic development would go round to everyone.
According
to the minister, the present administration is implementing fiscal discipline
and other measures to address the messed up economy it inherited from its
predecessors.
He
said with the temporarily painful measures, the government would turn around
the adversity to gains and ensure that never again would the nation run a
corrupt, clueless and an oil-dependent economy.
The
minister said the administration had been unfairly accused of placing too much
emphasis on the fight against corruption at the expense of addressing fundamental
economic issues.
He
stressed that no amount of economic reforms put in place could work unless the
“monster of corruption is successfully dealt with’’.
Mr.
Mohammed said the administration’s fight against corruption was not selective,
and that the government was not probing the 2015 elections campaign funds of
the Peoples Democratic Party.
He
assured that that the government would continue to remain focused in its
efforts to rebuild the country.
The
Minister Consular of the embassy, Sola Akinlude, who conducted the minister
round the embassy, said the official population of Nigerians resident n Spain
was about 100,000.
-NAN
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