Presidential Research & Communications Unit

The Presidency is satisfied with the conception and implementation of the Seven-point Agenda of the Administration and therefore has no plans to either prune or adjust it.

Presidential spokesman, Mr Olusegun Adeniyi said on Sunday June 7 that the agenda was crucial to the survival of the Nigerian economy and the pivot on which Vision 20-2020 was anchored.

The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity was reacting to the suggestion put forward by the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Sanusi Lamido Sanusi during his confirmation hearing on the floor of the senate.

Mr. Adeniyi noted that since the Seven-point agenda is not an ad-hoc measure, any attempt to prune it would amount to economic suicide and urged Nigerians to see the views expressed by Governor Sanusi as “a suggestion with the best of intention and not an attack on the government focal policy.

"Fortunately, I watched the Senate proceedings of the confirmation of the CBN Governor, Mr. Lamido Sanusi. And I didn't see any area where he attacked President Yar'Adua's seven-point agenda as was imputed. All the items on the seven-point agenda are inter-related. But if you check the 2009 budget, those two areas highlighted account for more than 90 per cent of the spending. But even at that, paying more attention to power and infrastructure does not mean you have to neglect the Niger Delta because if you do that, the power agenda would be dead on arrival.

"One of the critical challenges facing government today is gas and pipeline vandalism. And the Niger Delta is crucial to this. You can also not ignore food security or even physical security. So, basically, the President and Mr. Sanusi are on the same page. I know that power is central to everything. And so does the President. That is why he is taking the Niger Delta situation very seriously because without tackling that problem, we will not have power, after we have made so much investment in turbines. With what is going on today, you cannot conclude that President Yar'Adua does not understand the importance of power and infrastructure. But my own interpretation of what Mr. Sanusi said on the need to pay more attention to two items on the seven-point agenda would be that he was only expressing the mind of the President with whom he had had extensive discussions in the last couple of weeks.

Other salient points raised by the spokesman include:

• The need for critical infrastructure led to the recent award of contracts worth N140 billion for the rehabilitation and construction of several key roads across the country.

• Once the current negotiations with trailer owners, who have about 3,000 trailers along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway are concluded, hopefully within the next few weeks, the company which won the concession of the highway will begin work adding that many other roads are also lined up for concessioning.

• President Yar’Adua is a methodical person, whose approach Nigerians will ultimately appreciate. In whatever the President does, there is much thought to it, not only in terms of current challenges and prospects but also with regards to the future.

• On the railways, government is now working on a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model with General Electric and African Development Bank (ADB) to ensure that by early 2011, there will be railway services across the nation.

• The dredging of River Niger, a project which has been in the offing since independence, will also be undertaken this year. The contractors have been mobilised to site and are only waiting for the water level to rise while the dredging proper will start in July with expectation that it will be completed before December 2009.

Related Stories
President Yar’Adua flags off expansion of Abuja highways
FEC approves concession of Lagos-Ibadan expressway
Power projects get N323bn