Townhall Meeting In Bariga/Somolu Local Council Development Area

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TRANSCRIPT OF REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, AT TOWNHALL MEETING IN BARIGA/SOMOLU LOCAL COUNCIL DEVELOPMENT AREA (LCDA) IN LAGOS STATE, ON TUESDAY, 21st AUGUST, 2018

PROTOCOLS

The main reason why I am here is not just to celebrate, but so that we can talk about a few things. One of the important things that I want us to talk about is the fact that our party, this party called the APC, is the vehicle that has been created by all our leaders. And I’m sure you know how our leaders created this party. The way it was created was a merger between several other parties. But our party was one of the main parties; CPC headed then by current President Muhammadu Buhari, and the ACN and several other parties and the so-called Reformed PDP. We all came together to form the APC.

Now we have come together, we have formed a strong party, although you hear one or two people have defected to another party and all that. But you know, whether people defect or not is a one-day wonder. We have a big and strong party, this is a party of focus, a party that is taking us somewhere. But, we must never forget that the party is as strong as we who formed it; each and every one of us. It’s very important in making sure that that party remains strong.

When I met with all the local government chairmen in Lagos who came over to Abuja to see me a few months ago, this was one of the things I said to them, that our party is important for all of us. Each and every one of us must recognize that. Sometimes, we are not able to get all the benefits we want at the same time. Not all of us can benefit at the same time from what we want. But so long as we remain together, so long as we remain united, our benefit will come, without a doubt. I have assured them on that. And we are seeing progressively how we have been able to make sure that people benefit one after the other. The first thing I want us to bear in mind is that we must be united, we must stay together as a party.

The important thing is that many of us here have been in politics for some time. But if we don’t stay united as one and a strong party, it will be difficult for us to make the kind of progress we want to make. And never forget that our party was a strong part, the ACN then, it was a very strong part to what is now the APC. We remain a very strong part of it, and we must remain a strong part of it. Nobody should deceive you into thinking that we are irrelevant; we are not irrelevant at all, we are very relevant.

Our National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as you know, was one of the very strong pillars, and remains a strong pillar in the APC. His political sagacity and his organizational skill have helped us a great deal in coming to where we are today, and we must remain together, focused and working together to have our common objective.

The reason why I emphasise this is because people say all sort of things. Sometimes they say, let just go and do something else, we don’t like this one. But we must just remain focused. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. We have taken that step, and we must have the fortitude to see it to the end.

Why is the APC government different? The one reason why we are different and the one reason why we are important for Nigeria is that the major problem this country has is corruption. That is a major problem. Many people might think it is something else; it is not ethnicity, it is not religion; it is corruption. It is people getting into high office and stealing the money that should be available for everybody. If we steal the money that should be available for everybody, eventually we will be in the same kind of problem that we were.

In the past four years of the previous administration, over US$393 billion was earned in oil proceeds alone. In the past three years, we have earned US$94 billion, look at the difference. The largest amount in any four-year period that has been earned by any government was earned by the previous government. And the reasons are very straightforward. The price of oil was about half of what it used to be. But with the same $94 billion, we have been able to do far more.

When we got into office, 24 states have not paid salaries for over six months and we ensured that these salaries were paid. And President Buhari said then, “Look, I have been a salary earner all my life, I have never done any business; the only thing I ever did is government work, either as a soldier or as head of government. I cannot imagine how anybody can go to sleep as a governor without paying the salaries of his workers. So we made sure that we paid salaries and we have done so many other things.

In fact, in investments, look at Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, for almost 12 years, with all that money it was never done. Now we have set about and we are doing it, we will complete it. Also, the Lagos-Kano railway project, so many of us know that we are moving towards Ibadan now. And we are going to complete it.

The simple reason why we are able to do so with less money is that you have a President no matter what anybody says, everybody knows something about him, he is not going to steal the money. If you have a President who will not steal money, you have solved at least 60 per cent of the problem.

In the past, what used to happen is that they just take money out of the treasury, and that is the truth. They will argue from now till tomorrow, they will shout from now till tomorrow; but they were just taking the money. And eventually, if you are taking money like that, the country will come to ruin.

Today, they ask us, they say, “which project have you ever completed?” Nigeria is not about a new project. We know we have so many new projects. In fact, they are over 200 abandoned federal projects. What we have done, the President said we must complete everything, that we can’t go and start new projects. Anybody can start a project, it is to complete it. If they don’t complete it, what’s the use. But what they do is they start a project, they start budgeting every year, the money disappears, the project is never completed.

For the first time, we are saying you must complete the projects. And I will give you a few examples. Look at the Abuja railway, the light rail inside Abuja itself; from the airport all the way to Idu. It was there for almost 10 years uncompleted. They said, they will complete it in 2012, then they abandoned it, nothing happened. We just completed it in 2018. The same as Abuja-Kaduna railway, they started it, they never completed it. We had to complete it.

We need a government that is serious and focused. That’s what we need now. If we have a serious and focused government for a few years in Nigeria, our margin will change, our children will have hope. There is nobody who can benefit by eating what he is supposed to sow for the children. Most of us are parents. You can’t be eating all the food that is meant to provide for your children. We must provide for them, we must save and plan for the future. This is what we are trying to achieve, and by God’s grace, we will achieve it.

Look at some of the programmes. As you know, the President’s focus has always been on the common man. When we came, there was the problem of employment; everybody that has spoken here has talked about youth unemployment. So when we came, we decided on a few things. First, the N-Power programme to engage as many young people who are graduates as possible. We started with 200,000, and just this month, we have employed another 300,000. So, in our N-Power programme, we have 500,000 young graduates who are employed in that programme. Now every local government in Nigeria has N-Power graduate.

What we must do for Bariga and Somolu is that when we are doing this next set, we would make sure we bring our people together and ensure that they go online and apply. We will also run a few other schemes for them, which will help them outside of N-Power, where we can bring some of our young people and engage them. That I can promise you. I must tell you that federal government programmes are our programmes, and it is up to us to mobilize. When we started the N-Power programme, Bauchi state, in the first round of 200,000; they had the largest number of applicants. They applied. But since then, we have rationalized the programme; every state has a good number of applicants.

The other thing we have done is GEEP. This a micro-credit scheme for market women and all that. We are doing one now for the petty traders that is called TraderMoni. We have launched it in Lagos, we are going to do at least 100,000 petty traders. Our petty traders here in Bariga must benefit from it. It is for small traders across the entire country. We also have one for people who are slightly higher than that, which is called GEEP.

I want to emphasize that everything we are doing, our focus, first of all, is to ensure that people are taken out of poverty. Our country is very big; over 200 million people, many young people coming out every day. But aside from that, we also want ensure that anybody who is doing anything at all, who is trading, that we are able to support them; artisans, mechanics, anybody who is doing any trading; if we are able as government to support such a person, we will be able to do better to improve them in what they are doing.

Now the reason why that is so is that when you look at the way government operates in the past; when you look at the government budget, it focuses on the middle-class; it usually will focus on those who have industries, who have manufacturing plants, and those kinds of people. That’s the high-end people. But that is a small percentage of our country, the majority of our people are at a very low level, the bottom of the pyramid, selling, doing little things and all that. Those are the people that we must first of all (focus on) so that the poorest are able to do better. If the poorest do better, it would be better for everybody. If all these young boys and girls in our midst have employment, it will be better for all of us. So, our focus now is to make sure that all these young people get some kind of employment and training. These 500,000 (in the N-Power programme), each of them has a tablet, where they can access a lot of training materials to train themselves; computer skills, code writing, entrepreneurial skills, all sorts of training. This is because we want to develop each of them so that they too can be self-developed, become better in whatever they do so that they can be self-reliant and do more for themselves as they go along.

I have noted a few requests. We will look at every one of those requests. I will be meeting with both chairmen of Bariga and Somolu; just as you have requested, we will meet in Abuja. But the most important thing is that whatever we want to do, we must ensure that these things will benefit the largest and poorest people. Because sometimes we as politicians we think that they (things we do) look good, but they may not benefit the majority of the people. The majority of people want something to feed themselves, they want something, no matter how small, to help themselves and their families. So, we must focus on those kinds of empowerment-type programmes that also help people to help themselves.

I have looked at some of the requests, an ICT hub, a technology hub; we are going to look at all of that. I am sure that you’ve followed some of the works we have been doing lately. I went round the ICT hubs across Lagos in particular, and across the country, and looked at the various technology hubs that are everywhere. There is no reason why Bariga and Somolu cannot be another centre. But in order to do so, I’m going to need your cooperation to sit down and look at what we can do, because one of the important things about this is that if it is going to be centred here, we must all look for the right place, the right location and how to ensure that it is sustainable over a long period of time.

So, I thank you all for your strong support all the time. The most important thing is that all our people have hope, and our people must realize that this is a journey and all of us must be part of that journey. And we must put in people who care about the common man, people who care about each and every one of us. And I’m sure that this country would be much better every year, every day.

I thank you all.