* Bayo Onanuga
By Pathfinder Reporter
Friday May 30, 2025
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As President Bola Ahmed Tinubu marked two years in office yesterday by reeling out his achievements, many people have knocked him described the last two years in the country as living in Hell.
Responding to the critics, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr Bayo Onanuga, said Nigerians have cause to celebrate the remarkable achievement of the government in 24 months.
The Presidency also said that the present administration has recorded tremendous successes within two years in office, assuring that in a few weeks to come the issue of inflation will ease off.
Onanuga said: “What I will just say is that two years after, we have many stories of success, and we can say very confidently that the reforms that this present administration instituted in 2023 have yielded fruits, and this is evidenced in many areas.
“In stable exchange rate, it has succeeded to harmonize the exchange rate, stop the arbitrary forex regime whereby you find official rate having a gap of about N200, N300 from the parallel market, that’s history.
“The exchange rate now is more stable than two or three years ago. Balance of payment, we have been recording positive, balance of trade we have been recording positive and not just in small figures but in very nice figures.
“Inflation, the one that has been giving some problems, is easing; it’s going down, and we expect it should go further down in the next two weeks or much because food prices, which is the major driver of this inflation, has continued to reduce.
“So I can say that we have cause to celebrate that this government has achieved a lot in the last 24 months. This is just the midterm. We should not forget that it’s just the midterm. We expect more successes in the second half of our journey, but we have so many things we are proud of that this government has achieved.”
Assessing democracy in the country, the Presidential aide said: “Democracy is alive, it’s thriving. You can see this government allows the opposition to thrive. You can see them holding meetings everywhere, planning their show, which shows that democracy is alive.
“And the APC is doing its show; you don’t see them fighting one another; everybody is on his lane. So, there is freedom of speech, because these are the things you look out for when you are talking about democracy.
“Freedom of speech is available, freedom of association is available. So democracy is thriving in our country contrary to some insinuations that this government wants to impose a one-party system. It’s all absolute nonsense, democracy is alive in Nigeria.”
Tinubu’s policies, unstoppable, irreversible —APC
Also throwing its weight behind the president’s performance in the last two years, the All Progressives Congress, APC, said while Tinubu’s predecessors avoided tackling complex challenges, the president has confronted all challenges without hesitation.
The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr Felix Morka, reviewing the performance of President Tinubu, said the ruling party, All Progressive Congress (APC) was fully behind the president.
Speaking in Abuja, Morka said: “We make bold to say that our vehicle of state, under the able, capable, safe and steady hands of our Executive Driver, leader, and President is on the move.
“Unstoppably and irreversibly, milestone after milestone, on a steady course on the road to our long-desired destination – a place of peace, security, and enduring prosperity.
“Our leader, Mr President, is not the first President of our dear country. But he is the first to break with what had become a stagnating culture of presidential inertia – ‘kick the can down the road for the next President’ – style of leadership and governance.”
Speaking on the challenges the APC administration has faced since it assumed office in 2015, Morka said the nation was drifting dangerously and was on the precipice before President Muhammadu Buhari was elected.
Morka said: “Today is like I said, a day to take in the progress we are making. It is not a day to get political or to reflect, you know, that far back. Because you cannot talk about Buhari without talking about the circumstances that Buhari himself stepped into and had to manage. Buhari was a stop-gap president. He came in to simply hold still a country that was already flipping off the key, flipping off the precipice. The country was, you see, look, all of the fallacies of the PDP is that the economy did better under their watch. It didn’t. The economy we ran was phantom. An economy where contracts were awarded and security votes were given.
“We saw what happened when Buhari took over with Dasuki’s ONSA, where billions of dollars meant to fight terror were simply shared with everybody. It is simply a question to them. What happened to all the money voted for power, the whole power sector reform? Again, shared out.
“In two years of this administration, we made clear that this president has enacted a vision and proclaimed a mission to tackle problems that were created generationally in our country. All of the difficulties we speak about today didn’t drop from the sky. They were long in coming.
“As I said, all the presidents who came before this president preferred to simply postpone the doomsday. Because we didn’t just wake up in the last two years to realize that fuel subsidy was a destructive device in our country. We didn’t.
“We have always known that, and as a matter of fact, there is no president who has come in the last 15, 20 years who didn’t remove fuel subsidy. Because when you think back, fuel was not at the point that President Tinubu met it back in 1999. It wasn’t. The way they did it was far, far lower. It was cheaper to buy fuel in 1999 in terms of the local economy than it was at the time that the hurricane hit this country.
“So it means that other presidents were taking out subsidy, you know, gradually. But let me tell you the difference between this president and the rest of them. Other presidents who intervened in the fuel subsidy regime did so to save a bit of money and to free up some money to get their job done.
“They didn’t do it because they were interested in solving structural problems that beset our economy. They didn’t do that. They simply needed to.
“At the All Progressives Congress APC, when we say that President Bola Tinubu is the President of progress and has set Nigeria on a road less traveled, we do not mean that this journey, of inter-generational significance, is without delays or bumps along the way.
“It does not mean that our travel plan and road map is set on an immutable course. It does not even mean that the vehicle in which we are traveling is set on cruise control.
“It means that our vehicle is set on a certain and determined course of travel – on a road that puts distance between where we are coming from and where we are going as a country and as a people.
“It is a road filled with renewed hope of infinite possibilities. A road that leads to our long-desired destination, a place of more peace, more safety and security, and a place of improved and enduring prosperity.”
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