Month: February 2021

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, says Nigeria did not exit the latest recession by accident, but with “hardwork, foresight and deliberate planning by government.”

The minister stated this on Saturday, February 20, when he featured on a Channels Television programme, “Sunrise Daily,’’ in Abuja.

1st News had reported that Nigeria slipped into recession for the second time in four years in the midst of COVID-19 after the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined for the second consecutive quarter in 2020 (Q2 and Q3)

The economy, however, came out of the recession in the fourth quarter as growth in agriculture and telecommunications had offset a sharp drop in oil production.

The GDP grew 0.11 per cent in the three months through December from a year earlier, compared with a decline of 3.6 per cent in the third quarter as announced by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Mohammed said exiting the recession occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic was not accidental.

He recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari had last year set up the Economic Sustainability Committee which came up with Economic Sustainability Plans to mitigate the effects of COVID-19.

“When you talk of GDP, it is the total sum of the value of your services and goods. Clearly, if there is a lockdown, you cannot go to work, and there is bound to be a recession.

“What we did was that we pumped money into the system by creating jobs.

“The first is the1,000 jobs through public works given to each local government and we have 774 Local Government Councils.

“So, we have 774,000 workforce engaged on public works like road; and this goes a lot in boosting the economy,’’ he said.

Mohammed said government equally introduced the Survival Fund which the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment supervised to prevent loss of jobs and create new ones.

The Survival Fund, according to the minister, was to ensure that Small and Medium Scale Enterprises did not collapse.

“With Survival Fund, we asked for companies that employ between five and 50 people; and we gave them payroll support for about three months.

“About 500,000 MSMEs benefitted from this programme,’’ he said.

The minister said the government also gave One-Off-Grant whereby N10,000 was given to each of 233,000 artisans; including hairdressers and mechanics.

He said some other programmes introduced by government included Conditional Cash Transfer with 3.6 million beneficiaries as well as N-POWER; TRADERMONI; FARMERMONI; MARKETMONI which reaches millions of people.