Determined to counter former President Goodluck Jonathan’s recent critical remarks and the gale of propaganda about the current administration’s achievements, President Muhammadu Buhari has said that his Administration has achieved a lot and that the results are visible to all Nigerians.
President Buhari stated this at the opening ceremony of a 2-day Conference for Media Handlers of States’ Chief Executives, organized by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum(NGF) in Abuja with the theme: “Governors Public Perception: Changing the Narratives Agenda”
Represented by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, he said, ”For our Administration, our achievements are there for all to see. We are delivering in the broad areas that formed the plank of our policies: Security, fight against corruption and the economy, which includes the massive provision of infrastructure, ease of doing business and agriculture, just to mention a few,”.
Former President Jonathan had said last week when he received PDP chieftains in Abuja that “The PDP administration for 16 years did well and will continue to do well but this administration has done nothing. They deployed propaganda and lies at a professional level.
“In the power sector, we did well to revive it. A state governor attacked our government, saying that any serious government should be able to fix the power challenge within six months.
“Today, APC has been in power for how many years now? Fortunately, the then governor is in the APC government as a minister.”
But Buhari, while reeling out his achievement said the APC government has ended years of subsidy and yet ensuring the availability of petroleum products; in raising power generation, transmission and distribution, in the massive provision of infrastructure; in tackling insecurity and also succeeding in agriculture revolution.
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”Those who accused this Administration of ‘propaganda and lies’ in the fuel supply sector, for example, did not tell Nigerians that whereas they paid between 800 billion and 1.3 trillion Naira as ‘subsidy’ yearly in their time, without making the products available even at regulated prices, this Administration is not paying any subsidy, yet all products are currently available at competitive prices and fuel queues are now history. In their time, they paid subsidy of 3.7 billion Naira daily in 2011; 2.2 billion Naira daily in 2012 and 2013, and 2.5 billion Naira daily in 2014, all for products that were never available.
” Those who accused this government of ‘propaganda and lies’ also said we have not achieved anything in the power sector. Comment is free, facts are sacred, as they say. When this Administration assumed office on 29 May 2015, available power on the grid totaled 2,690MW, transmission capacity was around 5,000MW and distribution capacity was 4,000MW.
” As at 4 September 2017, the available power that can be put on the grid was 6,619MW; the transmission capacity was simulated at 6,700 MW (up from 5,000 MW in 2015) but the distribution capacity was 4,600 MW, which was what was put on the grid. On September 12, 2017, production of power reached an all-time level of 7,001MW,” he said.
In his presentation at the occasion, one-time Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to late President Umaru Yar’Adua, and Chairman Thisday Editorial Board, Mr Segun Adeniyi said media handlers of State Chief Executives must know their principals in order to carefully handle them, stressing that the biggest challenge facing these media handlers is how to project the achievements of their principals against the background of worsening cases of disinformation and fake news, adding that the best way to tackle the problem is to remain focused, refuse to be distracted and intimidated.
Earlier, the Director General of the Nigerian Governors Forum, Mr Asishana Bayo Okauru Esq while welcoming the participants hinted on the negative public perception of the various state governors and how the conference can help change the narratives.
He noted that the development has become imperative, hence the convergence of media handlers to these state chief Executives to learn the strategies in dealing with the situation.
