Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo’s media aide Laolu Akande has revealed that “malevolent forces” given leadership responsibility by the Presidency tried to scuttle the National Social Investment Programme.

Mr Akande stated while congratulating the vice-president on his birthday. Mr Osinbajo turned 66 on Wednesday. He was born on March 8, 1957.

He said the vice-president showed endurance, enabling people to sustain the pursuit of vision by imbuing patience and humility that created perseverance.

Lauding the vice-president’s personality and commitment to serving Nigerians, Mr Akande said, “It is the endurance that kept him in place when all kinds of malevolent forces were bent on diminishing the effective delivery of public goods directly to the people of this nation.”

Mr Osinbajo’s media aide added, “(This is) in an unprecedented scale, such as the Social Investment Programme of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration. Some entrusted with leadership responsibilities wanted to privatise the SIP by sharing slots among the elites in a scheme meant to secure some social safety nets in a country fiercely battling poverty.”

Mr Akande also listed empathy as one of the vice-president’s qualities that reinforced a common bond of humanity by which individuals become an example of selflessness, rendering service and value on private and public levels.

He pointed out that the vice-president’s empathy moved him to Maiduguri in the early months of President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime, where he led a charitable effort producing a learning centre.

According to Mr Akande, the learning centre offered orphans affected by insurgency some of the best types of education available anywhere in the world in the past six years.

“Finally, it is the excellence for instance that makes him interrogate his aides and people pushing laudable ideas in and out of government by demanding for scaling up the numbers. After all, he would wonder ‘what’s the use of a government programme that reaches only a few thousands in a population of over 200 million’, said Mr Akande. “For him, excellence says think, not just out of the box, but think big; do the hard part, apply yourself, be relentless, work tirelessly at goals.”

(NAN)