President Muhammadu Buhari has defended his performance and that of his party, the All Progressives Congress, since he rose to power in 2015.
The President spoke about his performance in the early hours of Sunday at the national convention of the APC in Abuja after he was affirmed as the party’s presidential candidate.
“We are very proud of our record from 2015 to date,” he told delegates and top officials of the party at the convention.
The President who is seeking a second term listed several achievements which he said shows that “change has come”.
He said, “We have arrested and checked the slide to anarchy on the security and economic front. Boko Haram is reduced to dastardly attacks on soft targets. Normalcy has returned to much of North East and neighbouring North West states.
“Our currency has stabilised, our reserves are now $44 dollars – a lot higher than we had in 2015. Power generation capacity has reached 8,000 megawatts against less than 4,600 megawatts when we came into office.
“As we invest in new power generation infrastructure, we are strenuously working to address the legacy deficiencies and challenges of transmission and distribution networks across the country.”
“We are executing independent power projects in nine federal universities to deliver uninterrupted power supply and we intend to extend to a total of 37 universities.”
President Buhari also spoke about progress in the agriculture and transportation sectors.
“We have revived most of our capacity to produce fertiliser locally. The government through its anchor borrowers programme and other incentives have empowered more than two million farmers to go back to the land,” President Buhari said.
“We now produce 80 percent of our rice requirement. Many farmers who nearly lost hope are now millionaires. We have introduced primary school feeding programmes to encourage attendance and enrolment. We also have introduced the conditional cash transfer to help small and medium businesses. The man, the woman and the younger people who drive and are driving our economy.”
The President added that his government was building roads and railway tracks with the aim of linking the 36 states with efficient road and rail transportation system.
He explained that the anti-corruption war would help to ensure that funds are available for a critical situation.
“We are attacking corruption head-on. With international support, we are recovering stolen Nigerian assets and applying them to infrastructural developments. Today, the corrupt are facing the wrath of law and leakages have been generally blocked.”
With the general elections fast approaching, the President advised all members of the party to be proud of the progress made, saying, “Mr Chairman, your Excellencies, members of the APC, we can be proud of our achievements; change has come”.
Although the President hailed the performance of the APC, he does not think the opposition PDP deserve any praise.
He said, “Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Nigerians, think of how much PDP governments earned between 1999 and 2015; think about what they did to it. Infrastructure down, security down, 18 local government area of Nigeria under control of a hostile army of insurgents, reserves depleted, bankruptcy is around the corner. What did they do with the money?”
