While many have been questioning the
achievement claims of the President
Goodluck Jonathan administration to
merit another term of four years,
Adebayo Adejobi looks at the silent but
pronounced strides of the government
even if some of them are at the macro
level of the economy
It has often been argued that economic
growths in the macro level always take
long to manifest at the micro level.
Economists believe that it is at the
micro level that the ordinary man on the
streets and low income earners, who
form the larger population in any
society, usually feel the effects of these
growths. But it is unarguable that before
there could be growth at the micro level,
it has to take place at the macro level.
Certain indices have to be guaranteed
before their effects could percolate down
to be felt at micro level. And that is why
the Transformation Agenda of the
present administration might be looking
a bit a paper affair but a careful study of
economic figures in the last few years
will reveal massive growth indices that
show that the nation is actually growing
economically. Perhaps, the need for the
ordinary man on the streets to feel these
impacts has made many analysts to
conclude that the nation has been at a
standstill. But contrary to this, it has
been massive movement towards
economic renewal for the nation.
Economy
Before the coming into power of
President Goodluck Jonathan, the
nation was a massive importer of food
stuffs. Nigeria was spending an average
of N1.4trillion annually on food
importation alone, thereby growing the
economy of countries where these
foodstuffs were being imported from.
Today, this has changed. The volume of
food imports has reduced by at least 50
per cent as it is now less than
N700billion per annum. Sources close
to the president say the president is still
not satisfied with this as he believes
that with the kind of climate and soils
nature God has blessed the nation with,
Nigeria has no business importing food.
Early in the year, the nation’s economy
was rebased by international agencies
like International Monetary Fund, IMF,
the World Bank and other relevant
institutions to determine the value and
strength of the Nigerian economy. At the
end of the exercise, it was revealed that
the value of the Nigerian economy was
now $510billion from the initial
$169billion in 2009. This made it the
biggest economy in Africa.
If there is one area where the country
could beat her chest and say she has
done well, it is in the area of direct
foreign investment, DFI. In 2013 alone,
the country attracted over $7billion in
direct foreign investment, making it the
number one investment destination in
the whole of Africa. Yet, one of the
things that made this possible, but
which perhaps went unnoticed, was the
port reforms carried out by the Jonathan
administration. It now takes seven days
to clear trouble-free cargo, down from
39 days before. And to make this more
effective, the number of agencies at the
ports has been reduced from 13 to
seven, streamlining bureaucratic and
financial requirements for clearance and
decongestion.
Agriculture
In the agricultural sector, it has been
massive reforms aimed at boosting food
production and making the sector a
major income earner for Nigerians and
also attracts direct foreign investment.
In the last two years alone, investments
attracted to the sector have reached a
whopping $4billion. Apart from this, the
reforms in the fertilizer distribution
network has led to increased food
production in the country. Last year
alone, there is an increase of over one
million metric tonnes increase in rice
production in the northern states. This
could not have been possible but the e-
wallet platform created by the
government for farmers in the Northern
part of the country. By this, over six
million farmers on the e-wallet platform
received subsidised farm inputs without
middlemen, thereby checkmating
decades of corruption in the system.
With this, over N50billion saved so far
from the fraud associated with
middlemen being in charge of fertilizer
distribution. Beyond this, is the issue of
storage facilities for farmers. Many are
of the opinion that no nation can
achieve any significant success in food
production if there are no adequate
facilities. In the last four years, the
number of silos in the country has
increased by over four hundred per cent.
As part of efforts to save the
environment and prevent desert
encroachment, the government procured
a total of 6,720,000 tree seedlings
raised in seven front line states of
Adamawa, Bauchi, Jigawa, Yobe, Kebbi,
Katsina, Kano, Yobe, Sokoto and Borno
States to combat desertification. In the
same vein, there was over 1.07 million
metric tonnes increase in farm output
following the introduction of dry season
farming through irrigation in 10 northern
states of Kebbi, Zamfara, Sokoto,
Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Gombe, Niger
and Bauchi last year.
Transportation
If there is one area many will give kudos
to the Jonathan administration, it is in
the area of road construction. By the
time the administration came in, the
total number of federal roads that were
in good condition was 12,000
kilometres. Today, that figure had risen
to about 28,000 out of a total of 35,000
kilometres. The reason for this was not
just the desire to get these roads fixed,
but the reforms put in place by the
minister of works, Mike Onolememen. In
a recent interview with THISDAY, the
minister said when he came in, he
discovered that the system in place in
the ministry did not give room for any
effective service delivery and project
monitoring. He said the director of
monitoring had to rely on reports rather
being able to do an on the spot
assessment of projects. Apart from this,
accessing counterpart funding for road
projects had been at paltry low level of
35 per cent. Onolememen explained.
“When I came in, the Road Sector
Development Team, RSDT, had what we
call Federal Road Development Project,
which was being handled by the
collaboration between the World Bank
and the Federal Ministry of Works. The
major projects under that was the
Nigeria-Cameroun highway facilitation
project. Before I took over, the Ministry
was barely able to access five to seven
per cent of the funds. When I came in
and took over, by the end of 2012, when
I was just one year in office, we had
accessed over 37% of that fund because
of better project delivery strategy. And
by the end of 2013 we had hit about 80%
utilisation. As we speak, I have
completed the projects I inherited under
that programme: the Enugu-Abakaliki
road, the Abakaliki-Ogoja road, the
Ogoja junction to Ikom road and Ikom to
Mfom Having completed that section of
the road last year, I now started the
outstanding corridors which are the
Mokwa-Bida road and of course, the
Akure -Ilesha road. Those projects were
awarded between October-November
last year and they properly commenced
about January this year. Both projects
have recorded about 65% completion.
We are upbeat that by April next year we
must have completed them and that will
bring to an end the First Phase of the
Federal Roads Development Projects.”
One sub-sector under the transportation
sector that Nigerians mourn its hey days
is the railway sector. It used to serve the
nation in terms of goods transportation
and haulage. But years of neglect and
deliberate mismanagement ensured that
the sector nearly died. But its massive
rejuvenation under the present
administration has been second to
none. As at the last count, major routes
like Lagos-Kano-Sokoto-Lagos, Enugu-
Port Harcourt-Enugu, and Lagos-
Kaduna-Lagos have been rehabilitated
with modern trains some of which are
air-conditioned. Even intra-city routes,
especially within Lagos, have been
equipped with new trains with facilities
for comfort and smooth journeys
depending on the economic wherewithal
of passengers.
Last week, the Vice-President, Alhaji
Namadi Sambo, commissioned the
Enugu-Port Harcourt-Enugu inter-city
train service. Speaking on behalf of the
president, the former Kaduna State
governor said the Jonathan
administration had impacted positively
on the lives of Nigerians.
“We have managed the economy such
that it has risen to be the greatest
economy in Africa and one of the largest
in the world. We have changed the
course of history with the railway
system in the last 30 years from the
neglected sector to a rehabilitated and
revitalised one by rehabilitating the
existing narrow gauge railway lines, its
operations and maintenance.”
Beyond this, perhaps many are not
aware that the Lagos-Kano, Port
Harcourt-Maiduguri and Itakpe-
Ajaokuta-Warri rail lines that were
moribund before have also been
rehabilitated.
The gateway to any country is its
airports. But for over 30 years, the
nation’s airports were allowed to decay
to the extent that they became an
embarrassment to the country. Many
countries were blacklisting the nation
and advising their nationals to be very
careful whenever they landed in
Nigeria’s airports. But for the first time
in the history of the country, all the
nation’s 22 federally-owned airports
were rehabilitated at the same time that
even critics could not but admit that it
has been a major departure from what
was obtainable in the past.
Power
During a meeting with would be
investors in the power sector before its
privatization, the minister of finance and
co-ordinating minister of the economy,
Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had told the
investors that President Goodluck
Jonathan was so passionate about
solving the nation’s power problem as if
his whole depended on it. As a result of
this, the government was ready to give
major incentives to these would-be
investors to boost their confidence in
order to convince them to invest in the
sector. However, one of the major steps
the administration took was having the
political will to unbundle the old Power
Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN,
privatise it and sold different aspects of
its operations to different investors.
While this was not expected to bring
succour to long suffering Nigerians, both
in private and commercial capacities, as
far as power was concerned, a solid
foundation had been laid to get a final
solution to the nation’s electricity power
problems.
Apart from privatisation, the
administration has completed and
commissioned at least three power
plants out of the six it inherited from the
previous government. The last
commissioned was the one at
Omotosho, a rural community in Ondo
State. The plant was capable of
generating at least 500 megawatts.
Upon commissioning, the plant had to
be shut down due to transmission
issues as there was no adequate facility
in place to transmit the power being
generated to consumers. When
everything is in place, the plant is
capable of providing electricity to three
states.
Civil Service Reforms
One of the areas where effective service
delivery has been hampered in terms of
good governance is the civil service. It
has been established that there is no
way a country can achieve its aims and
objective without effective civil service
that implements government policy.
Gone are those days when the service
was populated by men and women who
wanted to make a difference and drive
the nation. One area the service has
become an albatross to the nation is in
the area of ghost workers. Every year,
billions of naira are lost to these fake
workers and the money ends up in
private pockets.
It was a as a result of this that the
present administration introduced the
Integrated Payroll and Personnel
Information System, IPPIS. This idea
exposed that the federal government
alone had over 50,000 ghost workers.
By the time these fake public servants
were weeded out of the system, over
N139billion was saved by the
government.
Since the money saved from this was
diverted to provide social amenities and
productive sectors of the economy, the
poverty rate in the country was reduced
to 33.1% from 62.2% that it was in
2013. This was according to the
Harmonised Nigeria Living Standard
Statistics, HNLSS, report according to
the World Bank.