A
abujagirl
Guest
Last week I promised to write about President Jonathan’s achievements. It would be silly and disingenuous to try to argue that his government has achieved nothing, or has been a total disaster, as some people have tried to insist. You will of course be familiar with most of what I’m about to say, because it is what his supporters have been shoving down our throats in the name of a ‘Transformation Agenda’.
Let’s start with infrastructure. On the railways the Jonathan government scores high marks. The railway line between Lagos and Kano has been revived, after about two decades of inactivity. The Enugu-Port Harcourt line has just been launched; Abuja-Kaduna is almost finished. There was a determined push to upgrade airports across the country, for which we are grateful. A lot of noise has been made about roads but I don’t see much evidence of transformation anywhere. I travelled by road to Benue last August and didn’t see anything that looked like transformation. Uyo-Calabar I’m told is still as awful as it was when I travelled on it in 2013. The East-West highway, which the government promised in June 2013 would be completed by December 2014, is not finished, even though a lot of work has been done, especially around the Benin-Ore axis. The Lagos-Ibadan expressway is still very far from being a hellish experience.
Agriculture is arguably this government’s strongest point. Minister Akin Adesina, winner in 2013 of Forbes Magazine’s Person of the Year, has brought incredible energy and vision to bear on his job, with the obvious support of the President. Last year I attended the launch of Olam’s integrated rice mill in Rukubi Village in Nasarawa State. It’s said to be the largest rice milling facility on the continent, and is certain to translate into considerable economic opportunity in the area.
There’s also the e-Wallet system that the government says now has more than 10 million farmers registered on it, designed to cut out the middlemen who invaded and messed up the fertilizer distribution system, and made it one of the biggest ongoing scams in the country.
Click here to read more
SOURCE: #PremiumTimes
#Benue
Let’s start with infrastructure. On the railways the Jonathan government scores high marks. The railway line between Lagos and Kano has been revived, after about two decades of inactivity. The Enugu-Port Harcourt line has just been launched; Abuja-Kaduna is almost finished. There was a determined push to upgrade airports across the country, for which we are grateful. A lot of noise has been made about roads but I don’t see much evidence of transformation anywhere. I travelled by road to Benue last August and didn’t see anything that looked like transformation. Uyo-Calabar I’m told is still as awful as it was when I travelled on it in 2013. The East-West highway, which the government promised in June 2013 would be completed by December 2014, is not finished, even though a lot of work has been done, especially around the Benin-Ore axis. The Lagos-Ibadan expressway is still very far from being a hellish experience.
Agriculture is arguably this government’s strongest point. Minister Akin Adesina, winner in 2013 of Forbes Magazine’s Person of the Year, has brought incredible energy and vision to bear on his job, with the obvious support of the President. Last year I attended the launch of Olam’s integrated rice mill in Rukubi Village in Nasarawa State. It’s said to be the largest rice milling facility on the continent, and is certain to translate into considerable economic opportunity in the area.
There’s also the e-Wallet system that the government says now has more than 10 million farmers registered on it, designed to cut out the middlemen who invaded and messed up the fertilizer distribution system, and made it one of the biggest ongoing scams in the country.
Click here to read more
SOURCE: #PremiumTimes
#Benue
