The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Nigeria has met with the organised Private Sector in Lagos State, reeling out the ‘APC manifesto’, which he said was the product of a survey that took over 6 months to develop.
General Muhammadu Buhari told the gathering on Monday that if elected, he would maintain periodic and regular series of meetings with the stakeholders to enable the government get informed advice from them on what should or should not be done to advance business interests.
Highlighting the party’s economic plans, General Buhari said that the policies would be governed by the highest consideration of how they could create jobs.
“Equipping and resourcing our security personnel, for example, will not be limited to provision of arms alone, but uniforms, boots and accoutrements, are enormous opportunities for textile production, garment making and shoemaking.
“Power supply is the minimum that we can seriously commit to in order to quickly galvanise the economy back to productivity.
“We agree with the privatisation of the power utilities but we believe it must go further to transmission.
“After the signing and handing-over ceremonies of the power assets the real work of producing, transmitting and distributing power is really just beginning.
“The reason the success seems elusive is that apart from the signing ceremony and handing over of the power assets, the hard work to connect the various parts of the power chain, supply gas, install transformers, complete substations has not been done,” he said.
According to him, the power sector reform that his party would implement would provide direct employment, as it would require over 200,000 trained personnel to support the initiative to provide power and light up Nigeria.
“Apart from the inherent direct employment that this will give, the reduction in cost of production, the savings from self-generation by Nigerians, who currently spend a lot of their income on purchase of diesel and petrol to generate their own electricity, will reduce the burden on their disposable income.
“These savings to Nigerians from reliable electricity will help the average Nigerian spend their money on other basic necessities of life and reduce poverty,” General Buhari said.
The former Nigerian military Head of State said the party would also focus on an initiative to build a refinery in Lagos, stressing that a local refinery would create jobs locally at a Nigerian refinery instead of refineries abroad, promote local fuel supply and National security, reduce importation, with less demand for foreign exchange and strengthen of the Naira.
He said that the party would also look at other areas which include infrastructure investment in roads and highway construction from one end of Nigeria to the other.
General Buhari further invited the representatives of the group to sit with his economic team to look at the party’s proposals and develop workable policies and implementation options.
He reminded the gathering that the ‘APC Manifesto’ was a product of a survey that took the party over six months to develop.
“We spoke to over 20,000 Nigerians across the 36 states and the FCT.
“The questionnaires we issued to them and the interviews we conducted showed overwhelmingly that; Insecurity, Corruption and the Economy were the biggest worries among the electorate,” he said.