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George Kerley
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Nigerians voted for President Jonathan and he is DELVERING!
by George Kerley

The domestic operations at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja has been moved to the international wing to give room for complete overhaul of the domestic terminal. Aviation Minister Stella Oduah has assured Nigerians that the airports will wear a completely new look in the months to come.

Nigeria is currently being cleaned up. Nigerians are now talking freely, criticizing, complaining and showing concern for their country because they see that things have to be done in the right way and the President is listening. Transformation is in Progress!
 

The National Assembly today is independent and has been empowered to serve Nigerians. There was a time when the National Assembly were considered as rubberstamps of the Presidency and could be ambushed by the Executive if they fail to 'serve' the feet of the Executive.

There was a time when Speakers and Senate Presidents were impeached at will. Never again! Transformation is in Progress!

Thanks to President Jonathan, exiled politicians, technocrats and activists such as Nasir El-Rufai and Nuhu Ribadu have returned back to the country from exile to contribute to National Development.

While Nuhu Ribadu has been drafted to help in urgently cleaning up the mess in the oil industry, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai remains self-employed and partly-employed at ThisDay where Nduka Obaigbena graciously donated a Friday Column to him so that he can vent his spleen on National Issues.

Some say he is not happy that President Jonathan did not give him the Minister of Power Slot. Others say if he was Minister of Power, he would not have been talking and writing so much and trying so hard to undermine the President. That is their concern.

There are those who still harbor grudges with El-Rufai because they feel he kept quiet when the Obasanjo Third term plan was on. They say he kept quiet when they needed him most. Some others say he needed his job more. That is their business. Transformation is in progress! The era of despots and dictators is over!

Gone were the days when people will disappear because they wrote unfavorable things about government or persons in government. President Jonathan is changing this country.

They say the President Jonathan acted against the wishes of Nigerians when he announced the removal of subsidy in January 2012. Some others said government should have first taken the bitter pill before giving it to Nigerians.

Some say the removal of subsidy made some Nigerians to see and know that government had actually been doing something for Nigerians.

Then there are others who say if President Jonathan had not announced the removal of subsidy, Nigerians would not have had the opportunity to understand the nature of fraud that had pervaded the process through which subsidy was provided to Nigerians. Now that they know, Nigerians are better prepared in engaging government and assisting in cleaning up the subsidy distribution process. Transformation is clearly in process.

Some say the North is poor. Some others cannot understand how a North that has held power for so long could be said to be so poor!

They wonder why some children of some Northerners own private jets and homes across key cities of the world, attend private schools in London, Switzerland and America while some others are left as Almajiris to beg on the streets, walk bare feet across long distances and recite Korans in unsheltered environments!

They wonder why children of some Northerners can afford to dole of millions of naira to purchase an Argentine HORSE (!) for the game of Polo while the Almajiris roam shabbily on the streets many of them afflicted with the disease of Polio! Part of the teachings of Othman Dan Fodio?

So you can now understand why they were amazed that a President (who is Christian and from the South) should take it upon himself to change the quality of lives if these Almajiri children and kickstart the roll-out of 1000 schools for Almajiris across Northern Nigeria!

They wonder how a Jonathan can show more concern than the other Northern persons who had had long shots at power yet turned a blind eye to the Almajiri issue!

In fact, they say some of the former military leaders from the North spent billions to build private schools for children of the rich and turned a blind eye to the children of the poor.

Some of these 'wonderers' have even accused these former leaders from the North of embezzling and frittering away to offshore accounts billions of naira initially set aside for Nomadic education. We may need to confirm that.

There are others who wonder where the agricultural power of the North had gone to....they wonder about cotton production in the North! They wonder about textile production in the North.

They could not stop wondering and so they applaud President Jonathan on his recent initiative to boost Cotton Production in the North with the signing of an MOU by the Federal Government and West African Cotton Company WACOT in February 2012
http://thenewsafrica.com/2012/02/20/boost-for-cotton-farming/

To boost rice production and reduce the reckless importation of rice into our country, our President, in Dec 2011 moved to increase the capacity of three rice mills in the country to 90,000 tonnes each! These mills are located in Ebonyi State, Niger State and Kebbi State.

How about the long troubled railway sector?

After decades of total neglect of the Nation's railway sector? People, the trains are coming back! The Lagos-Kano express passenger trains will soon commence operations! Delays on the route commissioning were due to floods which washed away a section of the Akere railway end.

Rather than work with just the old bridge, the President instructed that a new bridge be constructed in Akere in addition to the re-enforcement of the old bridge and the provision of additional culverts in the affected areas.

A two-year N12.1 billion contract for the rehabilitation of the 640km line between Jebba in Western Nigeria and Kano in the North had been originally awarded to Costain West Africa Plc in 2010.

Prior to the flooding of last year, Costain, a Lagos based company, had subcontracted the project to Chinese Civil Engineering Corporation CCECC after failing to keep to deadlines. CCECC had already been awarded the contract for rehabilitating the 48km stretch of rail track between Jebba and Lagos.

And then we come to the power sector which is now being given the most definitive attention in more than three decades after it was left to rot and decay by leaders who cared more about guns and coup plots rather than infrastructure upgrade and maintenance!

From a meager 2800MW, we have slowly moved up to 4400MW. This is still very low but the people in charge of the situation are not sleeping. Nigerians will not allow them. President Jonathan will continue to push them to deliver.

The Aviation industry cannot be left out in this discourse. Airports across the country are currently being speedily rehabilitated!

For more than three decades, no maintenance or rehabilitation work had been done in our local airports! For instance, in the nation’s premier gateway, the Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMIA) Lagos, not a single block had been added to the complex or rehabilitated in terms of expansion since it was built 30 years ago! From conveyor belts, central air-conditioning system to runways, they all need complete replacement. What the authorities have been doing for a long time was simply managing the existing structure despite the remarkable upsurge in passenger and cargo traffic within the last decade.

Expansion works have begun in Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna and Kano airports and would take a few months to complete.

Concessionaire agreements are also being studied, addressed and terminated.

Already a substantial part of the General Aviation Terminal (GAT), Lagos has been brought down for complete reconstruction work!

The domestic operations at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja has been moved to the international wing to give room for complete overhaul of the domestic terminal. Aviation Minister Stella Oduah has assured Nigerians that the airports will wear a completely new look in the months to come.

Thank God for President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan!

To be continued. The Tori plenty!!

 

 

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