Federal Government has refuted insinuation in certain quarters that President Bola Tinubu is being controlled by cabal and shadowy inner circle in his government.
The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, denied this in Abuja on Thursday while delivering an address at the APC National Summit with the theme “Renewed Hope Agenda: The Journey So Far”.
The Minister said that the President, rather, welcomed a wide range of perspectives, and took informed decisions solely in the best interest of Nigeria.
“You need to study the president very well. You can have your voice; you can say what you want to say; he will listen to you but his decision is ultimately his own. I think it’s important for us to recognise that”, he said.
Speaking on the theme of the summit, Idris said, President Tinubu remained committed to transforming Nigeria through the Renewed Hope Agenda, describing it as a bold, people-first blueprint turning obstacles into opportunities.
“The Renewed Hope Agenda iis about positively impacting the lives of the people of Nigeria, through bold decisions designed to unleash the full scale of Nigerian potential, in a way that has never been seen or done before”, he said.
The Minister recalled that Tinubu inherited a nation at a crossroads and immediately moved with clarity and courage.
“Among the first decisions the President made were the removal of petrol and foreign exchange subsidies, which had ,been amongst the biggest impediments to Nigeria’s progress, costing us billions of dollars in losses and waste”, he said.
Idris noted that “true leadership involves the ability to make decisions that might be tough in the short term, but are guaranteed to deliver lasting returns”.
He said the outcomes of the president’s reforms were now evident across all sectors through large-scale infrastructure, social investment programmes, revamping of the nation’s mining and petroleum sectors among others.
“At the federal level, the increased revenues have set a new standard for ambition and execution of large-scale infrastructure projects”, Idris said.
He highlighted four signature highways — the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway, Calabar-Abuja Superhighway, and Akwanga-Jos-Bauchi-Gombe Highway.
