Yemisi Izuora
The International Press Centre (IPC) Lagos-Nigeria, has released a compilation of the campaign promises made by President Muhammadu Buhari in the course of electioneering activities for the 2019 general elections.
Thirty of such promises covers pledges on specific and general issues of Road/Rail infrastructure, Education, Agriculture, Poverty Eradication and Inclusion of Youths/Women in government as well as the fight against Corruption and Insecurity were documented.
The documentation was done by IPC’s Media Monitoring Team, while the promises were derived from quoted statements of the President in some national dailies over a four-month period from November 2018 to February 2019.
The IPC reminded the president that he made a firm promise to engage one million N-power graduates and skill up 10 million Nigerians in partnership with the private sector, expand the school feeding programme from 9.3m to 15 million children, creating 300,000 extra jobs for food vendors and farmers, complete the Ibadan/Kano phase of the Lagos/Kano rail link, the Port Harcourt/Maiduguri line, Itakpa/Warri link to Abuja, through Lokoja and 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.
Among other promises are the establishment of a peoples Moni bank, institutionalization of the giving of soft loans of up to 1million naira to small traders, artisans and commercial drivers, increase the beneficiaries of trader Moni, market Moni and farmer Moni from 2.3 million to 10million, create more room for inclusion in government by achieving 35 per in female appointments and give more access to youths as aides of cabinet members and through opportunities for appointments in board and agencies.
Others are introduction of special mentoring programme in governance with young graduates working with ministers and other appointees, reinterpret the education curriculum through coding, robotics, animations and design thinking and retraining of all teachers in public primary and secondary schools to deliver digital literacy, among others.
Director of IPC, Mr. Lanre Arogundade, said the exercise was in line with the tradition of IPC, which in 2011 documented 91 campaign promises of President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
According to him, it was also embarked upon pursuant to the implementation of Component 4b: Support to Media of the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN) Project by IPC over a 52-month period.
Explaining the methodology further, the IPC Director said the campaign promises of all the presidential candidates that contested the 2019 elections were documented but only that of President Muhammadu Buhari was being released being the declared winner of the elections.
He however said both President Buhari’s campaign promises and those of the other candidates would later be uploaded on the IPC websites.
Explaining the rationale for the documentation of the campaign promises, Mr. Arogundade said the activity was in consonance and conformity 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”, Mr. 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 documented campaign promises 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 fulfilment of key campaign promises made by the president”, he said.