The Minister
of Information, Lai Mohammed, has said that his only sin against Nigerians was
talking too much before the 2015 general elections, which was won by
Muhammadu
Buhari, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC.
The former
spokesperson of the APC disclosed this
at a town hall meeting held in Abuja. The minister said, “I believe that my
only sin is talking too much before the elections and now I have to pay the
price.”
The Minister announced that the 500,000 Social Intervention Scheme of
the present administration will start on Saturday, adding that Nigerians will
begin to feel the impact of the new order.
The Minister noted that the
administration campaigned on three broad areas: to tackle insecurity, fight
corruption and revamp the economy and boasted that the promises had been met to
a great extent, insisting that the administration is on track.
‘‘We acknowledge
that the nation is passing through a very difficult situation at this time,
with the loss of over 60 per cent of our national income due to the crash in
the price of crude oil.
‘‘Though Nigeria has faced the challenges of
ethno-religious violence, armed robbery, cattle rustling, kidnapping for ransom,
militancy and violent agitations, the most daunting security challenge faced by
the country when we assumed office on 29 May 2015 was the Boko Haram
insurgency.
‘‘The Administration is also tackling other security problems with
the same decisiveness, whether is it cattle rustling, herdsmen/farmers clash,
militancy and regional agitations.
We are not only desirous of communicating to
Nigerians, we are actually taking practical steps to address issues.’’
“When we
came in, many local governments in the north-east were under the control of
Boko Haram.
They hoisted their flags, they were even collecting taxes, but
today not even a single local government is under the control of Boko Haram.
“We have been able to liberate 16,000 captors from the enclave of Boko Haram.”
