 Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture, has stated that the Buhari Administration is gradually transforming Nigeria through innovative measures. Lai made this known while speaking at the 2018 ‘Africa Together Conference’ at the University of Cambridge in the UK over the weekend. He listed some of the areas the government has made great impact mentioning; investment in people, changing the business environment and building national infrastructure.
”In my country, school enrolment is a challenge we face. And one of the main culprits is malnutrition. Government has stepped in: 8.2 million are being fed daily free meals in 45,000 schools. Not only does this increase attendance and provide children with a – in some case only – nutritious meal a day, it enhances learning efficacy in class and boosts cognitive development over the long term,” Alhaji Mohammed said. On the Home-Grown School Feeding programme, Lai said it has been successful as it has also brought about the employment of over 80,000 cooks and a ready-made market for food crop farmers. 
”Much of our programme has honed-in on business reform. Nigeria has moved up 24 places on the World Bank Ranking of Ease of Doing Business index – putting it amongst the top 10 global reformers, along with Zambia, Malawi and Djibouti. The two areas we have prioritised are starting a business and access to credit. In Nigeria, registering a business used to take months. Now it takes 24-48 hours. Unwrapping the bureaucracy and streamlining processes encourage an uptick in new official enterprises. We have introduced online registration, with features such as the electronic stamping of documents. And to ensure this brings with it the maximum benefit, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises clinics have been deployed across a variety of states to provide regulators a contact point with informal business and budding entrepreneurs to clarify any issues,” Alhaji Mohammed said. 
The minister also addressed the challenges faced during access to credit adding that they are working on it to ensure that it is possible for MSMEs to register their movable assets, such as vehicles and equipment, and use them as collateral to raise loans and finance, thus removing the need for traditional assets (such as real estate, offices and factories). ”For instance, Nigeria earmarks 30% of its annual national budgets for capital expenditure. That means 2.7 trillion Naira has gone towards our infrastructure in the last 2 years -unprecedented in our history.
Power generation has climbed to 7000MW (from just over 2500MW), to which we hope to add another 2000MW by the end of the year. We have also laid down thousands of kilometres of road. Also, the Government has now signed a concession agreement with an International Consortium led by General Electric. This will breathe new life into the tracks, increasing capacity and speed. Not only will this allow for goods and services to be moved around cost-effectively, it will allow the prosperity of the nation to be more equitably spread through increased connectivity,” he said.
 Photo Credit: Getty
