Nigerians should re-elect President Muhammadu Buhari come next year because there is no alternative to him.
The Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau, made this assertion on Thursday while answering a question posed by Mr. John Momoh, owner of Channels Television at the International Press Institute (IPI) World Congress holding in Abuja.
The question is: “Why should Nigerians re-elect President Buhari?”
In his reaction, Dambazau said Buhari should be re-elected for continuity, adding that no one could do it better than Buhari.
The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun also campaigned for the president.
Her words: “Nigeria is on the path to sustainable growth and recovery and we’ve never had it so good in terms of our potential to grow and to really show what Nigeria can do as a diversified economy.”
In his answer to the same question, the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said: “We delivered on our promises. We promised Nigerians we are going to fight insecurity, we fought insecurity. We promised Nigerians we are going to revamp the economy, we have revamped the economy. We promised we are going to fight corruption, corruption today is a taboo in Nigeria.”
The Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr. Okey Enelamah, answering the question said Buhari deserved a second chance.
“Under the leadership of the President we have changed the conversation in Nigeria. We are now talking about the importance of security, of fighting corruption and a good economy rather than saying corruption is not a problem,” he said.
Earlier too, the ministers responded to questions on various national issues posed by participants during the “Conversation with the government of Nigeria” segment.
Responding to a question on what the Federal Government is doing to secure the country with the killings in Zamfara State as an example, Dambazau accused the governor of the state, Abdulaziz Yari of abdicating his responsibilities on the security of his state, noting that security was not the responsibility of the federal government per se.
He stressed that the solution to the security challenges in the states was good governance.
His words: “Most state governors tend to push the major part of their responsibilities to the federal government. Security is human. Good governance is the final solution for security and it is not the number of security you deploy. These are just treating the symptoms but the actual solution is good governance in the state.
“It is wrong for the governor of Zamfara to say that he is resigning as the Chief Security Officer of the state. Even if he is given all the forces, he cannot use all of them to deal with these issues. Good governance is the final solution. I want to suggest that security isn’t federal government problem as such.”
On the issue of the country’s porous borders, the minister, while acknowledging that there were challenges, said the government was doing its best to overcome them.
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According to him, the government had established a multi-situation agency room in the Ministry of Interior which would be commissioned very soon.
The situation, he explained, was connected to immigration headquarters, and set up in a way that he would be able to observe what happens at some of the border posts from his office.
Dambazau disclosed further that his ministry was also in the process carrying out biometric registration of all irregular migrants that had overstayed in the country so as to be able to monitor the movement of such persons.
Reacting to a question on what her ministry was doing to checkmate companies, especially in the media industry that deduct taxes from staff but fail to remit such to the relevant tax authorities, the Finance Minister, Mrs. Adeosun disclosed that they were using technology to tackle the problem.
She pointed out that it was a criminal offence for companies to deduct taxes from staff without remitting them.
The minister said staff were at liberty to report such companies when they fail to get their tax receipt after deductions.
Adeosun disclosed that her ministry was getting a lot of calls on its whistleblower lines which had helped in the fight against tax offenders.
“The corporation from the public has also been a great help in the battle against such. What we do with that information is to push them on to the relevant authorities like the FIRS or state tax authorities,” she said.
For the Trade and Industry Minister, Mr. Okey Enelamah, the government’s focus when it comes to industrialisation is to create jobs and not take them away.
He said this while responding to a question on the Federal Government’s agenda on Industry 4.0.
According to him neither industry nor technology should be seen as an end in themselves but means to an end.
Alhaji Lai Mohammed also told the audience that he was not aware of the plight of a journalist who has been incarcerated for the past two years because nobody informed him about it.
The ministers were all in agreement that the Federal Government had done well in the agricultural sector, describing it as one of the government’s success stories.
