Again, the Vice President, the so-called Pastor Yemi Osinbajo, has decided to spout his oft repeated falsehood that the Jonathan administration did not plan for Nigeria’s future and that the current economic travails facing Nigeria under the failed Muhammadu Buhari administration, were caused by the Goodluck Jonathan government.
Mr. Osinbajo repeated this discredit false claim on Tuesday the 4th of December, 2018, at the opening ceremony of the 5th National Family Planning Conference in Abuja where he said:
“Between 2011 and 2015 when Nigeria enjoyed some of the highest revenues in history and overtook South Africa to become the largest economy in Africa, there was no commensurate impact in poverty alleviation and wellbeing.”
I am known for facts and I will now proceed to show, with facts, that Mr. Osinbajo is a notorious liar whose pastoral calling is in doubt.
First of all, the Jonathan administration had a 10-year development plan known as the Transformation Agenda and part of that plan involved setting up institutions to save money for the rainy day and stabilize Nigeria’s future budget.
Thus, in May 2011, then President Jonathan set up the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority with an initial $1 billion USD in seed capital.
The Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority has three different funds which included the Stabilization Fund which was set up as a safeguard against budgetary deficits and a last resort from which any government could withdraw annually to meet shortfalls in the budget caused by short falls in oil prices or other budgetary constraints.
The Future Generation Fund which is a savings fund for long-term investments to provide savings for future generations of Nigerians.
And lastly, the Nigeria Infrastructure Fund which is meant to secure investments in the infrastructural development of the country. It should be noted that the money being used to fund the second Niger Bridge is not money that was provided by the Buhari administration, but money that came of the Nigeria Infrastructure Fund set up by the Jonathan administration.
Nigerians may note that when the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority was conceived by then President Jonathan, it was precisely the then Rivers state Governor, Rotimi Amaechi and the then Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, now the current chairman of the All Progressives Congress and the then Lagos State Governor, Raji Fashola, now the minister of works, power and housing that led a group of Governors who later moved over to the APC, to resist the creation of the NSIA.
Nigerians may note that then President Jonathan refused to touch the Excess Crude Account and wanted the monies there transferred into the Sovereign Wealth Fund until members of Mr. Osinbajo’s party, the All Progressive Congress, led by the then Governor of Rivers state and chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum, Rotimi Amaechi, took the Federal Government to court and got the Supreme Court to force the Jonathan administration to share that money with them.
And the sad thing is that Osinbajo failed to mention that the $6 billion that the Jonathan administration saved in the Gas Fund for the development of our gas infrastructure is what the Buhari government shared out to the states in the name of Paris Club refunds. Or that the Bank Verification Number, Treasury Single Account and the Cashless policy are all initiatives of the Jonathan administration.
And even beyond the NSIA, the Jonathan administration had several initiatives to turn around the lives of Nigerian youths including the Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (YouWin), the Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS), the Presidential Special Scholarship Scheme for Innovations and Development scholarships (PRESSID) to First Class graduates of Nigerian universities to mention a few.
With these schemes, Nigeria under Jonathan became the third fastest growing economy in the world according to CNNMoney and the International Monetary Fund.
Moreover, whereas the International Food Policy Research Institute in their annual Global Hunger Index of 2013, praised the Jonathan administration for significantly reducing hunger in Nigeria, today, the World Economic Forum and the World Poverty Clock have both declared that Nigeria under Buhari has become the world headquarters for extreme poverty having overtaken India, a nation eight times our size.
Additionally, while former President Jonathan built 165 almajiri schools and 14 new federal universities to help reduce the number of out of school population in Nigeria, it should be noted that the Buhari government has not built even one nursery school, yet the claim that Jonathan did not plan for the nation and that they did.
Finally, a frequent visitor to Nigeria is Mr. Bill Gates who in 2013 praised then President Jonathan’s handling of the economy when he visited Nigeria, but had a completely different view of President Buhari’s handling of the economy.
On March 22, 2018, at an expanded National Economic Council at the Presidential Villa, Mr. Gates looked President Buhari in the eye and told him that his ‘economic blueprint does not address Nigerians’ needs’ and that under him, ‘Nigeria is one of the most dangerous places in the world to give birth’.
So with these facts I have presented, it is established that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is a liar and his so called pastoral calling is a ruse that hides a man who has sold his soul to satan, the father of lies. At this point, it is necessary to state that if I am asked to define what conjoined twins are, I would point to the relationship between Osinbajo and fake news.
Reno Omokri (For Dr. Goodluck Jonathan)
