Palace Of The Emir, Alhaji Rilwanu Adamu

• Share:

BUHARI ADMINISTRATION COMMITTED TO COMMON MAN IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY – SAYS OSINBAJO

REMARKS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, AT THE PALACE OF THE EMIR, ALHAJI RILWANU ADAMU, IN BAUCHI, ON OCTOBER 23, 2018

PROTOCOLS

Your Royal Highness, it is a very special pleasure to be here once again in this traditional home of the people of Bauchi State. When I told President Muhammadu Buhari who has come more often, I was coming, he said l must extend his warm personal greetings to you and of course, the people of this great State.

We are here for several kinds of things that have been pointed out by the master of the ceremony. One is of course, to commission some of the projects that His Excellency has completed. They are quite a few of them.

We just finished the housing estate, which we just commissioned, and phase 2 of the project. We will be going for the launching of the MSMEs Clinics, the Micro and Small Enterprises.

We usually have these clinics in every State; the whole idea is to bring all of our regulatory authorities like NAFDAC, SON, Cooperate Affairs Commission, and give them representatives to the State so that they can meet with the small business owners and traders. Many of them have problems in registering their products and services, so because these regulators are in Abuja or Lagos, what we have done is to bring the regulators to meet with the people in their State and tell them what their problems are.

As a matter of fact, there is something we are going to do in Bauchi State for the first time; we are also launching what we call a one-stop-shop for the regulatory authorities. This means that here in Bauchi, we will have NAFDAC, SON, Corporate Affairs Commission, under one roof here in Bauchi State, so that any one of these businesses can go there to deal with all their problems.

This will be the first time we are launching the one-stop-shop and at the same time, the MSME Clinic. l think the reason we have been able to do so is because of the active cooperation of His Excellency, Governor Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar. He is one governor who has done so much in terms of supporting the Federal Government.

As a matter of fact, when we started our Social Investment Programmes, one of our programmes called N-Power, where we are engaging young graduates, Bauchi State has the highest number of applicants, higher than even Kano and Lagos States, where we expected high numbers. This was on account of the fact that he went round to make sure that young people registered.

We are here, and in the N-Power programme, we now have more than 8,000 graduates that have been employed here.

We are also doing the Home Grown School Feeding programme, where we feed children in schools and l think about 2,000 primary schools where we feed about over 6,000 children in a single day here in Bauchi State.

Also, we have our Conditional Cash Transfers, we give to the poorest families in this State. l think we have about 20,000 of them who have been given this small amount of N5,000. So we are working very hard to make sure we are able to achieve something for the common man.

The President has always said and he keeps saying that his government is the government of the common man; the man on the street and as God helps us to provide money, we will be able to provide more for the poor.

One of the things that we see in government is not that we don’t have money, but most of the money that should be given to the poor is stolen. Corruption is the major problem of this country.

Our problem is not lack of money, that is why for me one of the good blessings that God has given our country is to allow Muhammadu Buhari to be President at this time.

I think it is a great blessing because everybody knows that he will not steal the money and because he will not steal the money, despite the fact that we are earning 60 percent less than they were earning in previous governments four years ago, we are spending almost five times more on projects today.

We are spending N2.7trillion on capital projects and that’s why we are able to build the Lagos-Kano railway, Calabar and the Mambila Hydro projects. These are projects that can be completed in 2 or 3 years, but we have started, we are putting our money there and the President is making sure that the projects are done.

The project will be completed and we will see the result of it. l want to just say that this government is committed to the common man in every possible way. One thing is to work hard to make sure that we satisfy the common man and we satisfy the people of this country.

So once again, l thank His Royal Highness for the warm welcome.

Thank you very much.