The report that President Muhammadu Buhari has joined his ministers in the blame game by accusing the state governors for being responsible for some of the failures of his administration dominates the headlines of Nigerian newspapers on Friday.
The Guardian reports that President Muhammadu Buhari again came down hard on governors over what he said was their unbridled ill-treatment of the administration of resources at the local government levels, causing what he termed stunted development experienced at the third tier of government and unfair labelling of his administration at the grassroots.
The President bared his mind yesterday after he delivered a speech at an event hosted for members of the Senior Executive Course 44 (2022) of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Veering off his prepared address, the President cited a personal experience involving a governor he did not name, misappropriating funds meant for local government, thereby inhibiting development at the grassroots.
He said it beats anyone’s imagination how some governors would collect money on behalf of local councils in their states, only to remit just half of such allocation to the chairman, who would further deplete the remittance in further pilfering of public resources.
He, however, related the development to the question of lack of integrity in the character of many of those holding such offices, adding that such actions are rather despicable and speak of the height of corruption.
President Buhari’s comments followed remarks on the Course 44 presentation, with the theme: ‘Strengthening Local Governance in Nigeria: Challenges, Options and Opportunities’, by some members of the Federal Executive Council, who aired their personal views on enhancing the autonomy of local governments.
The newspaper says that the Director General and Chief Executive Officer, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Abdullahi, has said Nigeria has no excuse to be left behind in a fourth industrial revolution, even as he disclosed that the agency would train one million Nigerians as developers in the next 18 months.
Abdullahi made this known at the 2022 Google Hustle Academy graduation, held in Ikeja, Lagos.
The event, held simultaneously in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, celebrated 5,000 business owners who have completed the Google Hustle Academy training programme.
Launched in February, Hustle Academy provides practical business training, which helps business owners learn soft skills that complement their hard talents, through peer-to-peer and mentor driven learning.
At the events, Google also announced a new speaker series in which successful African entrepreneurs share lessons and advice, furthering its commitment to helping entrepreneurs and small businesses thrive.
This year’s graduates were chosen from nearly 10,000 applications. The 5,000 graduates come from 23 cohorts who attended five-day virtual bootcamps, where they learned how to define their business strategy, increase sales, and how to pitch for investor funding. The curriculum also included lessons on digital marketing and effective financial planning.
Abdullahi said: “In Nigeria, small and medium businesses (SMEs) contribute more than 46 per cent and account for 96.7 per cent of the workforce in the country. So, SMEs are the lifeline of our economy.
“Our target is to train one million developers in the next 18 months. We want to have 350,000 trained developers before the end of 2022 and we will complete the one million mark in 2023.”
The Punch reports that the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria has expressed concern that the slow growth in the economy is hindering the prospect of establishing a strong fiscal space and buoyant foreign reserve.
In a statement issued on Wednesday and made available to The PUNCH, the association claimed that despite the higher oil prices as well as the improvement in terms of trade, the expansion of the growth of the Nigerian economy remains sluggish above the population growth rate.
The statement read in part, “The accompanying prospect of establishing a strong fiscal space and buoyant foreign reserve remains unutilized. Inflation is at a 17-year-high of 21.09 per cent and petroleum subsidy payment is not only draining the government’s coffers but accelerating the path of the economy to debt peonage.”
MAN noted that while fiscal indiscipline, heightened insecurity, slow COVID-19 recovery, oil theft, and the war-induced energy crisis were the lingering factors driving the economic headwinds, recent environmental and climatic challenges are significantly leaving a negative mark.
MAN added that the recent report by the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that the year-on-year real GDP growth of the Nigerian economy stood at 2.25 percent in the third quarter of 2022.
“At a real GDP value of N18.96 trillion, the latest performance signifies a shortfall of 1.78 percent from 4.03 per cent real GDP growth recorded in the third quarter of the previous year. It also indicates a 1.29 percent decline from the value of economic activities recorded in the second quarter of 2022,” the body stated.
According to MAN, the declining growth is an indication of lower production and lower employment.
“Therefore, the continuous downturn of the economy has further validated the urgent need to release an updated unemployment rate that corresponds with the current economic situation. “The last published figure was in December 2020 at 33.33. Analysts had projected that the country’s rate of unemployment is well above the 40 per cent mark,” it maintained.
The association added that the country has experienced a setback in the fight against poverty resulting in a downgrade from a middle-income to a low-income economy.
It also explained that the growth slowdown will result in higher unemployment that can diminish the taxable capacity of individuals and in turn worsen the debt-to-GDP and debt service-to-revenue ratios.
The newspaper says that as the Independent National Electoral Commission steps up the application of technology in the electoral process ahead of the 2023 elections to general acclaim, reactionary forces are mounting both open and surreptitious campaigns to discredit its efficacy. They should be resisted.
In its editorial entitled “Nothing should derail INEC’s IT drive”, the Punch stated that while INEC has commendably repeated its determination to stick to its technology-driven electoral procedures, some political actors have been voicing criticisms and objections. Some cast doubts on the relevance of INEC’s Biometric Voter Accreditation System and the Results Viewing Portal, otherwise known as electronic transmission of election results.
Their claims are groundless; deploying technology is the right way to go to infuse greater credibility in Nigeria’s turbulent elections.
With less than 70 days to the presidential election, the protest against the deployment of technology is not only coming late, but is also baseless. Such push-back is seen as at worst, an attempt by vested interests to halt the recent improvements in the electoral process, or at best, an instinctive distrust of modernity and innovation. For a country seeking to improve its fledgling democracy, both tendencies are unhelpful.
Opposition is also coming from unexpected quarters. The National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Abdullahi Adamu, had expressed doubts over INEC’s capacity to deliver a credible election using the BVAS and the RVP when he received a Commonwealth delegation on the 2023 general elections in Abuja. The APC’s National Organising Secretary, Suleiman Argungu, also doubts the efficacy of e-transmission in Nigeria, citing the unstable power supply as one of the obstacles to the innovation. Others claim Nigerian voters “are not sophisticated enough.” They are wrong.
APC’s leeriness is surprising because the introduction of technology-notably the electronic card reader-in 2015 is partly credited with enabling it as an opposition party to surmount possible manipulation and dislodge an incumbent government, and also because the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), and the party are expected to share the credit for innovation and cleaner elections with INEC
But the critics’ fears are groundless. Apart from its success around the world, experts at home and abroad have reassured Nigerians of the workability and benefits of technology-backed electoral processes. Resoundingly, the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, the umbrella body of telecoms companies in Nigeria, has certified that the electronic transmission of results of the 2023 elections is possible with the quality of telecoms architecture available in the country.
GIK/APA