Yemisi Izuora
Nigeria is hoping to save about $90 million every year from the new Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility of Aero Contractors with capacity for aircraft C-checks and other comprehensive levels of maintenance established in Lagos.
President Muhammadu Buhari in his his Democracy Day broadcast on Tuesday, said that transportation Sector had continued to undergo a series of reforms in order to sustain the international best practices and ensure safety and security.
He said the nation’s major airports had witnessed reconstruction of runways, installation of navigational equipment and new international terminals due for commissioning in Abuja, Lagos, Kano and Enugu, while Bilateral Air Services Agreements (BASAs) between Nigeria and the governments of other countries will significantly open up new flight routes.
The President observed that as a result of strict regulatory and compliance policies, Nigeria retained her Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Category 1 status, after a routine international audit.
According to him: “Giant strides have been recorded over the past three years to improve road transport infrastructure in all geo-political zones of the country.
“The railway sector has also received tremendous attention as this Administration is committed to the goal of linking all State capitals in the Federation by rail network to ease the movement of goods and passengers”.
President Buhari explained that the government recently conducted focus labs in three key sectors of the economy namely; agriculture and transport, manufacturing and processing as well as power and gas, which have yielded significant prospects for investments and Job creation to the tune of $22.5bn with a potential for creating more than 500,000 jobs by 2020.
He said these investment generation initiatives were expected to increase capital inflows in the form of foreign direct investment.
The President added that there was a high prospect that the cumulative investments from this first phase of the labs would hit $39.2bn by 2025.
Under agriculture, President Buhari explained that Nigeria continued to pursue a strategic food security programme built around self-sufficiency and minimization of import dependency.
He maintained that as a result of this, rice importation from other countries had been cut down by 90 percent, which has a direct impact on foreign reserves.
He emphasised that: “The Social Investment Programmes (SIP) has been created as a means to graduating our citizens from poverty through capacity building, investment and direct support. The major strategic objective is to restore livelihood, economic opportunities and sustenance for the poor across the country. The SIP programmes and projects include: A Home Grown School Feeding Programme – About 8.2 million pupils are currently being fed from 24 States of the Federation with over 75,000 Catering Staff engaged under the programme.”