The National Chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Adams Oshiomhole, has lauded the Buhari administration for ensuring the availability of petroleum products and locally produced rice during the Christmas and New Year festivities in the country.
Oshiomhole made the commendation when he addressed State House correspondents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Thursday.
He said the president’s decision to encourage local production of rice in particular, has made it possible for Nigerians to patronise home grown rice during festivities, like the yuletide season.
”Few years back, people were always afraid of what will happen during the Christmas season, all your money, all the little money you are saving to take back home to celebrate with your people, you end up patronising ‘Black Market’ to buy a litre of petrol at two, three, or four times the value and sometimes it is adulterated.
”And we see pictures of people who are stranded across the country because they cannot access petrol.
”I also think that we ought to celebrate the fact that we are able to celebrate Christmas and New Year and people have rice everywhere that were not imported from other countries – Nigerian made rice.
”Now if we can sustain this policy for another one year or two years and Nigerians get used to eating Nigerian rice and our farmers get a ready market for rice, obviously, that aspect of food security would have been put behind us.
”I believe it is something that we should commend the President for what he has done and the courage to put Nigeria first before any other sentiment.
”So, we can say that we can see a gradual revolution taking place in the agricultural sector,” he said.
The APC chairman observed that Buhari’s 2020 New Year message was unique and has given a lot of hope to Nigerians.
He said: “We also thought that giving the reactions of some oppositions, we reassured Mr President that there was nothing wrong and we are indeed happy with the New Year message to Nigerians.
”The responsibility of every leadership is to inspire hope. Life is sustained and driven by hope and the challenge of leadership is not to join the people to lament that things are terrible, to give up and join the people in wallowing in self-pity.
”The principles of leadership is to inspire people, give them hope and in this case, in line with the principles of accountability and democracy, democracy is not only about voting and everybody goes to sleep.
“It is all about explaining periodically what he is doing, what he is going to do differently and what he hopes to accomplish within a given time. And I think that is what the President’s new year message sought to do.”
Oshiomhole assured Nigerians that going forward in 2020, the APC would ensure that ”it takes into account all the mistakes it made in 2019 so that the party will be more stronger, more coherent and more peaceful”. (NAN)
