The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said on Thursday in London that the opposition lacked the moral right to blame President Muhammadu Buhari–led administration for unemployment in the country.
The minister who was a guest at the New Africa Magazine, said the previous administration of the Peoples Democratic Party created the unemployment that the present administration was addressing.
Fielding questions from the editorial board of the best-selling Pan-African magazine, the minister said that the government had created millions of job through right policies and programme.
Mohammed said: “The opposition created the unemployment. As at the time when the nation was earning so much billions of dollars from oil, they left the infrastructure to decay and corruption was at the peak.
“What we have done when we came in was to stop the pillage and bleeding and start massive investment in critical infrastructure which is key to generating jobs.
“Our records are there for the people to see.’’
The minister stressed that the Buhari’s administration had done a lot in fixing the economy through right policies and programmes as well as deployment of resources.
Specifically, Mohammed said the government was investing massively in infrastructure to revive the economy and the fund so far deployed in the area in three years was more than that of the PDP’s 16 years.
He said the government had been funding all the projects abandoned by the PDP led government including the Mambilla power project, roads including Lagos-Ibadan dual carriage way, Abuja-Kano expressway, East-West road and the second Niger bridge among others.
He said the Buhari administration had diversified the economy and reduced the importation of rice staple from 480,000MT to 25,000MT, thereby, saving five billion dollars hitherto spent on its importation daily.
The minister noted that the official blocking of importation of rice and the support by government through the Anchor Borrower Programme had encouraged local production of the staple.
Mohammed added that not less than 21 integrated rice mills had been in optimum operation through the programme.
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