Ahead of the May 29 anniversary of the first year in office of President Bola Tinubu, the administration has ratcheted up claims that the Nigerian leader is doing well in steering the nation in the right direction.

The Presidency, through Mr Tinubu’s media aide Ajuri Ngelale, said the president had continued to implement measures aimed at reshaping the battered economy since assuming office in May 2023.

Mr Ngelale said this on Tuesday in Abuja.

The presidential spokesman said, “Nigerians understand that this president, in his first days in office, dealt with the reform of the fuel subsidy regime, dealt with the reform of the financial markets, particularly with respect to the unification of the foreign exchange rates.

“He put an end to the type of incessant and really ravaging, round tripping we were seeing within the sphere of the Central bank of Nigeria. But then again, of course, sometimes when you stop the bleeding, it’s not seen as an achievement.

“But there’s a reason many others refused to do what this president has now done. This is why the president has been roundly commended, not just locally but internationally for the reforms he has put in place.”

Mr Ngelale explained that Mr Tinubu was not unaware of the impact of the reforms on Nigerians and has embarked on a broad scope of economic intervention to alleviate the citizens’ plight.

He said one such measure was the interventions and capitalisation of medium, small, and micro enterprises (MSME), including the N200 billion for all segments of the business population operating in the country.

Mr Ngelale said Mr Tinubu did not also leave out the development of infrastructure across the country in various sectors. He said these investments aimed to have a ripple effect among people who operate along the value chain segments of such infrastructures.

Mr Ngelale explained that the past one year has also seen significant interventions in the area of accelerating power performance especially with the Siemens Energy agreement and others in the provision of off grid power.

He said that Siemens was into the end to end modernisation of the nation’s power transmission grid to ensure enhanced quality and quantity of power supply to corporate and individual consumers.

Mr Ngelale added that the president has dedicated one billion dollars to off-grid power through capital formation and mobilisation from multilateral institutions dealing with the supply of off-grid solar home systems.

He said this would be allocated to primary health facilities, rural communities, and rural farms to reduce about 50 per cent of post-harvest loss in the country because the produce could not reach the markets.

(NAN)