Presidency Lists Achievements in 2013

In a self-coordinated review of its performance in the outgoing year, the Presidency on Sunday described its performance as one filled with unprecedented feats, notwithstanding the series of distraction from the opposition.

According to Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, major policies were made while important projects were executed for the progress of many sectors of the economy, contrary to the postulations of the opposition.

'It is an incontrovertible fact that Nigeria under Jonathan has reduced its food imports by about 40 per cent and increased its local production of rice, cassava, sorghum, cotton and cocoa in percentages ranging from 25 to 56 per cent in the last two years', he said.

'For the first time since Independence, the Nigerian agricultural sector is attracting unprecedented Foreign Direct Investment. Over the past two years, the sector has attracted $4bn in private sector executed letters of commitment to invest in agricultural value chains, from food crops, to export crops, fisheries and livestock.

'The number of private sector seed companies grew from 10 to 70 within one year. Over $7 billion of investments from Nigerian businesses have been made to develop new fertilizer manufacturing plants, which will make Nigeria the largest producer and exporter of fertilizers in Africa. It is also noteworthy that agricultural lending as a share of total bank lending has risen from two percent to six percent in two years'.

On the power sector reforms initiated by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2010, he stated that the major component of the reform, which is the privatisation of the generation and distribution power infrastructure,, was successfully accomplished in 2013.

'This put Nigeria on a sure path of steady power supply in a no distant future', he said. 'With the completion of this process and the 10 NIPP projects, Nigeria would for the first time in history move away from vertically integrated state-owned and very poorly managed electricity industry to a modern private sector led fully regulated market with the right incentives capable of attracting accelerated new investments to kick-start Nigeria's re-industrialization'.