The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, has denied placing Nigeria above the United States in terms of infrastructural development.
Fashola was recently quoted widely in the media as having said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration had surpassed his American counterpart, Mr. Joe Biden in the expansion of the country’s infrastructural base.
“I can assure you that the present All Progressives Congress (APC) administration of President Buhari has achieved what even the US government is trying to do, in terms of infrastructure.
“As at December 2021, we had completed 941 kilometres of roads across all states and geopolitical zones,” Fashola had reportedly said.
But in a statement issued yesterday by his Special Adviser on Communications, Mr. Hakeem Bello, the minister clarified the statement, alleging that it was “mischievously” attributed to him.
The minister also blamed the “main opposition” in the country for being behind the development, noting that it was a precursor to what to expect as the 2023 election approaches.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which lost the 2015 presidential poll to the APC, is regarded as the country’s main opposition to the ruling party.
Bello stated that the minister gave further explanation while responding to a journalist’s question on the issue during an inspection tour of the ongoing rehabilitation of the Abuja- Kaduna-Zaria-Kano Dual Carriageway Sections I to III.
“The first point to make is that I didn’t say that Nigeria’s infrastructure was better than America’s infrastructure because certainly anybody who knows what he is doing will know that America is a much richer nation, their infrastructure is well ahead of Nigeria.
“What I was talking about at the presentation with the APC Youth Ministerial Conference was about the challenges of infrastructure and that it is universal. Every country commits to infrastructure as a legitimate way to create work, to grow the economy and distribute wealth as we have seen here.
“That’s the first point I was making, and that in a democracy you always need the parliament to authorise what you spend on infrastructure and so I was making the comparison that Buhari has been able to get his parliament to authorise his spending.
“And that is why we were even able to gather here (at the Special Ministerial Conversational Conference). But that the American government is struggling to get authorisation from their own parliament to start what we are already doing. I didn’t say our infrastructure is better than theirs,” he added.
According to the minister, the “deliberate misreporting” of his clear statement of fact and the almost “spontaneous orchestration” of reactions based on the “misrepresentation” on the social media should send a clear warning to right- thinking and well-meaning Nigerians about the type of campaign, which the main opposition wants to run towards the 2023 election.
“It’s a campaign of lies and misinformation. The main opposition has a very uncomfortable relationship with the truth; so, they are going to run a campaign of lies and disinformation; so, we must be ready for it,” he added.
He explained that the “progress” the Buhari government has been making was making the opposition uncomfortable, pointing out that it was meant to disprove that work is going on all across the country.
“They can’t disprove that infrastructure is being developed; so, they are going to look for every way to distort and misinform the public,” he said .
The minister vowed that he would remain undaunted by the “unwarranted attacks based on misinformation”, adding that he took time to make the clarification in the course of the inspection tour to intimate Nigerians with the alleged plan by the main opposition party.
Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
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