The International Press Centre
(IPC) Lagos, has released a compilation of the campaign promises made by
President Muhammadu Buhari in the course of electioneering activities for the
2019 general elections.
Thirty (30) of such promises
covering pledges on specific and general issues of Road/Rail infrastructure,
Education, Agriculture, Poverty Eradication and Inclusion of Youths/Women in
government as well as the fight against Corruption and Insecurity were
documented and contained in a statement signed by the IPC Programme Manager,
Sanmi Folabi.
The documentation was done by
IPC’s Media Monitoring Team, while the promises were derived from quoted
statements of the President in The Nation, The Punch, Daily Sun, Daily Trust,
Vanguard, ThisDay, Leadership and Nigerian Tribune newspapers over a four-month
period from November 2018 to February 2019.
According to the statement, the
specific sources were page 6, The Nation newspaper of Monday November 19, 2018;
page 2, The Punch Newspaper of Monday November 19, 2018; page 6, Daily Sun
newspaper of Monday, November 19, 2018; front page, Daily Trust newspaper of
Monday, November 19,2018; page 5 and 41, Vanguard newspaper of November 19,
2018; page 1 and 10, This Day of November 19, 2018; page 2, Nigerian Tribune of
November 19, 2018; page 25, Leadership newspaper of December 5, 2018; front
page, Thisday, January 17, 2019; page 12, Daily Sun Newspaper, Thursday,
January 31, 2019; page 9, Nigerian Tribune of January 17, 2019; and front page,
Vanguard Newspaper, February 09, 2019.
The promises are:
1. To engage one million N-power
graduates and skill up 10 million Nigerians in partnership with the private
sector.
2. To expand the school feeding
programme from 9.3m to 15 million children, creating 300,000 extra jobs for
food vendors and farmers.
3. To complete the Ibadan/Kano phase
of the Lagos/Kano rail link.
4. To complete the Port
Harcourt/Maiduguri line.
5. To complete the Itakpa/Warri
link to Abuja, through Lokoja.
6. To complete the Second Niger
Bridge and the East-West Road connecting Warri, Delta State, to Oron, Akwa Ibom
State, through Kaiama and Port Harcourt in Bayelsa and Rivers State.
7. To establish a peoples Moni
bank.
8. To institutionalize the giving
of soft loans of up to 1million naira to small traders, artisans and commercial
drivers.
9. To increase the beneficiaries
of trader Moni, market Moni and farmer Moni from 2.3 million to 10million.
10. To create more room for
inclusion in government by achieving 35% in female appointments.
11. To give more access to youths
as aides of cabinet members and through opportunities for appointments in
boards and agencies.
12. To introduce special
mentoring programme in governance with young graduates working with ministers
and other appointees.
13. To reinterpret the education
curriculum through coding, robotics, animations and design thinking.
14. Retraining of all teachers in
public primary and secondary schools to deliver digital literacy.
15. Remodeling and equipping of
10,000 schools per year.
16. To complete the 365 road
projects under construction in all parts of the federation.
17. Provision of infrastructure
and rebuilding the economy.
18. To sustaining the
anti-insurgency war and curb insecurity.
19. To fight corruption and
revamp the economy.
20. To develop 6 industrial Parks
in each of the geopolitical zones.
21. To establish 109 Special
Production and Processing Centres (SPPCs) across each senatorial district of
Nigeria.
22. To develop the Special
Economic zone to quickly concretize our made in Nigeria for export (MINE) plan.
23. To expand the social
investment program so as to eradicate poverty.
24. To ensure completion of
Manbilla Dam and Bridge.
25. To ensure the construction of
the Makurdi Taraba Borno rail project.
26. To complete the bridges
across the stretch of River Benue in Ibi local government area.
27. To continue to pursue
agricultural policy by ensuring that fertilisers are made available at all the
local government areas across the country, for easy access by farmers.
28. To resuscitate the Ajaokuta
Steel Company.
29. To ensure the completion of
the on-going Zungeru Hydro Power project.
30. To include persons of
integrity in the cabinet.
Director of IPC, Mr. Lanre
Arogundade, said the exercise was in line with the tradition of IPC, which in
2011 documented 91 campaign promises of President Goodluck Jonathan of the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
According to him, it was also
embarked upon pursuant to the implementation of Component 4b: Support to Media
of the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN)
Project by IPC over a 52-month period.
Explaining the methodology further,
the IPC Director said the campaign promises of all the presidential candidates
that contested the 2019 elections were documented but only that of President
Muhammadu Buhari was being released.
He, however, said both President
Buhari’s campaign promises and those of the other candidates would later be
uploaded on the IPC websites.
Explaining the rationale for the
documentation of the campaign promises, Mr. Arogundade said the activity was in
consonance and conformity with IPC’s mandate to advance democratic
accountability.
“The essence is to ensure that it
serves as a tool for journalists to monitor, track and ask questions about the
diverse aspects of the implementation including using the Freedom of
Information Act to such relevant questions,” Arogundade stressed.
“Having trained journalists
across Nigeria on issue-focused reporting of elections, we believe they need
information like this to follow-up after the elections,” he added.
According to him, the documented
campaign promises will also be useful for civil society groups working on
development and democratic governance issues as well as various electoral
stakeholders.
“The documentation of the
president’s electoral promises from the media reports, which is by no means
exhaustive, is to serve as a major instrument to proactively engage the Buhari
administration on its performance over the next four years and provide
benchmarks in seeking democratic accountability, service delivery and the
fulfilment of key campaign promises made by the president,” he said.
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com