President Bola Tinubu on Monday delivered his first New 12 months tackle to residents with a pledge to fight any impediment that hampers the competitiveness of companies within the nation. He defined, amongst different issues, the steps taken to enhance the economic system.
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Pricey compatriots,
It offers me immense pleasure to welcome all of you – younger and previous – on this model new 12 months of 2024. We should elevate our fingers to Almighty God, in gratitude, for His grace and benevolence upon our nation and our lives within the 12 months 2023 that has simply has handed.
Though the previous 12 months has been a really difficult time, it has been eventful in some ways. For our nation, it was a 12 months of transition that noticed a peaceable, orderly and profitable transition of energy from one authorities to a different, marking one other exceptional step in our 24 years of uninterrupted democracy.
It was a 12 months during which you, the gracious folks of this blessed nation, have entrusted your belief in me with a transparent mandate to make our nation higher, to resume our economic system, to revive safety inside our borders, to revive our floundering industrial sector enhance agricultural manufacturing, nationwide productiveness and set our nation on an irreversible path to nationwide greatness that we and future generations will endlessly be happy with.
The duty of constructing a greater nation and guaranteeing that now we have a Nigerian society that takes care of all its residents is the explanation I ran to grow to be your President. It was the core of my marketing campaign message for Renewed Hope, on the premise of which you elected me president.
All the things I’ve accomplished in workplace, each resolution I’ve made, and each journey I’ve taken past the shores of our nation, since I took workplace on Could 29, 2023, has been accomplished in the most effective pursuits of our nation.
Over the previous seven months of our administration, I’ve made some tough but essential choices to avoid wasting our nation from finances catastrophe. A kind of choices was the abolition of gas subsidies, which had grow to be an unsustainable monetary burden for our nation for greater than forty years. One other was to take away the stranglehold of some on our forex system, which solely benefited the wealthy and strongest amongst us. No doubt, these two choices have introduced some inconvenience to people, households and companies.
I’m acutely conscious that for a while now the conversations and debates have centered on the rising price of dwelling, the excessive charge of inflation which is now above 28 % and the unacceptably excessive charge of underemployment.
From the boardrooms of Broad Avenue in Lagos to the primary streets of Kano and Nembe Creeks in Bayelsa, I hear the groans of Nigerians working laborious daily to supply for themselves and their households.
I’m not conscious of the expressed and generally unexpressed frustrations of my fellow residents. I’m positive that a few of our compatriots are even questioning whether or not our authorities desires to resume their hopes on this manner.
Pricey compatriots, take this from me: time could also be laborious and attempting, however our spirit should stay unbowed, as a result of laborious occasions by no means final. We had been made for this era, by no means to waver, by no means to falter. At present's socio-economic challenges should rekindle our love and perception within the promise of Nigeria. Our current circumstances ought to make us resolve to work higher for the great of our beloved nation. Our state of affairs ought to make us resolve that we’ll all use this new 12 months, 2024, to grow to be higher residents.
We have now labored quietly to free prisoners from captors. Whereas we nonetheless can't boast that we've resolved all questions of safety, we're working laborious to make sure all of us have peace of thoughts in our properties, workplaces and on the highway.
Having laid the inspiration for our financial restoration plans within the final seven months of 2023, we are actually able to speed up the tempo of our service supply throughout all sectors.
Final December, at COP28 in Dubai, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and I agreed and dedicated to a brand new deal to speed up the supply of the Siemens Power energy challenge, which is able to finally present a dependable provide of electrical energy to our properties and companies. the Presidential Energy Initiative that began in 2018.
Different vitality set up initiatives to strengthen the reliability of our transmission traces and optimize the integrity of our nationwide electrical grid are underway throughout the nation.
My authorities acknowledges that significant financial transformation can’t happen with no steady electrical energy provide. In 2024, we’ll take a step additional in our quest to restart native refining of petroleum merchandise with the Port Harcourt Refinery and the Dangote Refinery, which shall be absolutely commissioned.
To make sure constant meals provide, safety and affordability, we’ll ramp up our plan to domesticate 500,000 hectares of agricultural land throughout the nation to develop maize, rice, wheat, millet and different staple crops. Final November, we began dry season farming on 120,000 hectares of land in Jigawa State underneath our Nationwide Wheat Improvement Programme.
On this new 12 months, we’ll race in opposition to time to make sure that all of the tax and financial coverage reforms we have to implement are codified and simplified to make sure that the enterprise atmosphere doesn’t destroy worth. On each international journey I’ve taken, my message to traders and different enterprise folks has been the identical. Nigeria is prepared and open for enterprise.
I’ll battle any impediment that hinders the competitiveness of Nigeria's enterprise group and I cannot hesitate to take away any impediment that hinders our path to creating Nigeria a vacation spot of selection for native and international funding.
In my 2024 finances presentation to the Nationwide Meeting, I listed my authorities's eight precedence areas, together with nationwide protection and inside safety, job creation, macroeconomic stability, optimization of the funding local weather, human capital improvement, poverty discount and social safety . As a result of we take our improvement agenda very severely, our 2024 finances displays the premium we place on reaching our governance aims.
We’ll work laborious to make sure that each Nigerian feels the influence of his authorities. The financial aspirations and materials well-being of the poor, probably the most susceptible and dealing folks shouldn’t be uncared for. It’s on this spirit that we’ll be introducing a brand new Nationwide Dwelling Wage for our diligent staff this New 12 months. Not solely is it economically good to do that, additionally it is the morally and politically appropriate factor to do.
I took an oath to serve this nation and do my finest always. As I’ve mentioned up to now, no excuse for poor efficiency by any of my appointees shall be ok.
It’s why I established a Coverage Coordination, Analysis, Monitoring and Implementation Unit throughout the Presidency to make sure that the outcomes of governance enhance the dwelling situations of our folks.
We have now established the parameters for analysis. Within the first quarter of this new 12 months, ministers and heads of companies with a future on this authorities that I lead will proceed to indicate themselves.
Fellow Nigerians, my best ambition in authorities as a Senator within the aborted Third Republic, as Governor of Lagos State for eight years and now as President of this blessed nation is to construct a good and simply society and shut the rising inequality. Whereas I imagine that the wealthy ought to take pleasure in their legitimately earned wealth, our minimal settlement needs to be that each Nigerian who works laborious and diligently sufficient is given an opportunity to get forward in life. I need to add that as a result of God didn’t create us with equal skills and strengths, I can’t assure that we’ll obtain equal outcomes if we work laborious. However my authorities will work on this new 12 months 2024 and past to present each Nigerian equal alternative to try and prosper.
If we would like the New 12 months to carry all its good advantages to us as people and collectively as a folks, we have to be ready to play our half. The duty of constructing a affluent nation isn’t just the job of the president, governors, ministers, legislators and authorities officers. Our fates are linked as members of this family in Nigeria. Our language, creed, ethnicity and spiritual beliefs, even when they aren’t the identical, ought to by no means make us work in opposition to one another.
This new 12 months, allow us to resolve that as co-heirs of the Nigerian Commonwealth, we’ll work for the peace, progress and stability of our nation. I make this enchantment to my political opponents within the final elections. The elections are over. It’s time for all of us to work collectively for the great of our nation.
We should let the sunshine that every of us carries – women and men, younger and previous – shine brighter and brighter to light up our path to an excellent daybreak.
I want us all a cheerful and affluent 2024.
Could God proceed to bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR
