Keeping government honest: IPC releases Buhari’s campaign promises

The International Press Centre, IPC, Lagos, has released a compilation of the campaign promises made by President Muhammadu Buhari during his electioneering campaign for the 2019 general elections.

Buhari ran for re-election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and won, though his main opponent, and candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, and his party, are in court, challenging the victory.  .

The 30 promises of the president, documented by the IPC, cover some specific and general issues of road/rail infrastructure, education, agriculture, poverty eradication and Inclusion of youths and women in government. Also documented are the much talked-about war against corruption and insecurity.

The promise in the IPC’s documentation include:

1. To engage one million N-power graduates and skill up 10 million Nigerians in partnership with the private sector.

2. To expand the school feeding programme from 9.3m to 15 million children, creating 300,000 extra jobs for food vendors and farmers.

3. To complete the Ibadan/Kano phase of the Lagos/Kano rail link.

4. To complete the Port Harcourt/Maiduguri line.

5. To complete the Itakpe/Warri link to Abuja, through Lokoja.

6. To complete the Second Niger Bridge and the East West Road connecting Warri, Delta State, to Oron, Akwa Ibom State, through Kaiama and Port Harcourt in Bayelsa and Rivers State.

7. To establish a peoples Moni bank.

8. To institutionalize the giving of soft loans of up to 1million naira to small traders, artisans and commercial drivers.

9. To increase the beneficiaries of trader Moni, market Moni and farmer Moni from 2.3 million to 10million.

10. To create more room for inclusion in government by achieving 35% in female appointments.

11. To give more access to youths as aides of cabinet members and through opportunities for appointments in board and agencies.

12. To introduce special mentoring programme in governance with young graduates working with ministers and other appointees.

13. To reinterpret the education curriculum through coding, robotics, animations and design thinking.

14. Retraining of all teachers in public primary and secondary schools to deliver digital literacy.

15. Remodeling and equipping of 10,000 schools per year.

16. To complete the 365 road projects under construction in all parts of the federation.

17. Provision of infrastructure and rebuilding the economy.

18. To sustaining the anti-insurgency war and curb insecurity.

19. To fight corruption and revamp the economy.

20. To develop 6 industrial Parks in each of the geopolitical zones.

21. To establish 109 Special Production and Processing Centres (SPPCs) across each senatorial district of Nigeria.

22. To develop the Special Economic zone to quickly concretize our made in Nigeria for export (MINE) plan.

23. To expand the social investment program so as to eradicate poverty.

24. To ensure completion of Mambilla Dam and Bridge.

25. To ensure the construction of the Makurdi Taraba Borno rail project.

26. To complete the bridges across the stretch of River Benue in Ibi local government area.

27. To continue to pursue agricultural policy by ensuring that fertilisers are made available at all the local government areas across the country, for easy access by farmers.

28. To resuscitate the Ajaokuta Steel Company.

29. To ensure the completion of the on-going Zungeru Hydro Power project.

30. To include persons of integrity in the cabinet.

Unveiling the exercise, Lanre Arogundade, Director of IPC, said the project was in line with centre’s tradition which, in 2011, documented 91 campaign promises of then President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party.

Explaining the methodology, the IPC Director said the campaign promises of all the presidential candidates that contested the 2019 elections were documented but his organisation just chose to release those made President Muhammadu Buhari being  the declared winner of the election.

Arogundade, however, said both Buhari’s campaign promises and those of the other candidates would later be uploaded on the IPC websites.

On the rationale for the documentation, he said the activity was in consonance with IPC’s mandate to advance democratic accountability.

“The essence is to ensure that it serves as a tool for journalists to monitor, track and ask questions about the diverse aspects of the implementation including using the Freedom of Information Act to such relevant questions”, Arogundade stressed.

“Having trained journalists across Nigeria on issue-focused reporting of elections, we believe they need information like this to follow-up after the elections”, he added.

According to him, the document will also be useful for civil society groups working on development and democratic governance issues as well as various electoral stakeholders.

 “The documentation of the president’s electoral promises from the media reports, which is by no means exhaustive, is to serve as a major instrument to proactively engage the Buhari administration on its performance over the next four years and provide bench marks in seeking democratic accountability, service delivery and the fulfillment of key campaign promises made by the president.” he concluded.