Nigeria’s Minister of works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, says President Muhammadu Buhari enjoys the approval of lawmakers unlike U.S. President Joe Biden who struggles to get funding authorisation from Congress.

Briefing Journalists at the special ministerial conversational conference, Mr Fashola explained that Nigeria was one of several countries across the world having infrastructural challenges.

However, he said the country was making progress as Mr Buhari has demonstrated an ability to obtain unanimous authorisation of the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila, Speaker, House of Representatives.

Mr Fashola noted that in spite of the U.S. wealth and infrastructure, the Biden-led administration still had its share of struggles.

“In a democracy, you always need the Parliament to authorize what you spend on infrastructure and so I was making the comparison that Buhari has been able to get his Parliament to authorize his spending, and that is why we were even able to gather here.

“But, that the American government is struggling to get authorisation from their own parliament to start what we are already doing. I didn’t say our infrastructure is better than theirs,” Mr Fashola said.

Meanwhile, the World Bank in its 2022 flagship report noted Nigeria’s economy under Mr Buhari is worse than 10 years ago, as his administration has been characterised by banditry, looting, corruption and heavy borrowing. 

The Buhari regime is notorious for borrowing heavily from countries like China, France, Japan and so on. The country owed $4.26billion as at June 2021. Finance Minister, Mrs Zainab Ahmed in 2021 expressed her discomfort that the nation had exceeded it’d borrowing threshold.

Last year, the global bank had heavily criticised Mr Buhari’s fiscal policies, noting the negative effect of Nigeria’s Central Bank exchange rate policies on investments and fuel inflation.

Speaking about the 2023 elections, Mr Fashola told citizens to be wary of the opposition party, saying “So, they are going to run a campaign of lies and disinformation. We must be ready for it. The progress we are making here, makes them very uncomfortable.”

He further said “They can’t disprove that work is going on, that infrastructure is being developed  so they are going to look for everything to distort and disinform the public. It is for members of the public to be vigilant.”