The Presidency has blamed opposition political parties and critics for negative opinions on President Bola Tinubu’s policies.
Naijaonpoint reports that the Special Adviser on Media and Policy Communication to the President, Daniel Bwala, stated this on Thursday, in an interview with TVC.
Bwala said the President’s policies have been delivering across the sectors of economy, security and education.
He highlighted that the government’s loan scheme for students has been embraced by Nigerian students. He also stressed the gains made in combating banditry.
President Tinubu’s Aide, however, added that Nigerians belive in the efforts of the President to deliver quality leadership.
“I don’t think that the policy has a poor widest acceptance. It does have, which is why you find implementation easy and then we have a broad-based perspective on the effectiveness of the policy. But I think that the opposition and naysayers are louder in their voice than the actual people whom the policy is targeted at.
“Well, of course, the policy targets the opposition as well. But usually when you bring politics into governance, then you mix it up. It is like a distraction because politics is about interest. Politics is like a game, like a sports. Politics is about de-emphasizing the strength of the opponent and emphasizing your own strength, finding the fault of that person.
“And that is not that period for the politicking. When that time comes when everybody reacts to go to the market and begin to advertise their candidate, that is when that will be welcome. At this point, what we need is to look at the policies of the government and the deliverables. Are these policies impactful? Do we have a testimony to support that? The policies we’re implementing, are they such that there are better alternatives?
“So in a normal climate where politics is played in its own serenity, the opposition talks about policies vis-a-vis what they believe to be better alternatives. So, for example, if you talk about a particular policy you want to do, they will say, no, we do not think that this policy will work or that this policy you’re bringing will take a longer time. Ours would have been A, B, and C. But because they are bereft of ideas and probably they are also confused where they are in their political parties, they don’t have a direction. And usually when you have like a monkey in a cage who is struggling to find path and cannot find, everything else in the cage is an enemy. And that’s the situation we’re having.
“But our concentration, as far as our job is concerned, is to communicate to Nigerians on the effectiveness of the government policy. We have seen that in education through the NELFund. You’ve seen the acceptability and the impact of that funds, the loans to the students. We’ve seen that agriculture marked improvement. Even when we had the flood which affected food production and consequently reflected in the, what do you call, food inflation, we’re able to find a way. Just a few days ago the president has signed and approved lots of money to be able to fix the dam.
“We’ve seen that in the area of security. You have just seen, I think about yesterday or two days ago, where the bandits surrendered. You know, after observing that, look, it is better for us to work with government. It’s better for us to avoid these criminal activities because we believe that government will listen to our agitation. So there is a broad-based application of this policy,” he said.
We Welcome Feedback
The Media and Policy Communication Adviser to President Tinubu added that the current administration has been tolerant of criticisms from Nigerians because it learns from the feedbacks.
“And we welcome feedback from Nigerians. Feedback in the sense that if you feel it is not impactful, we are welcoming. This is a government that welcomes criticism as well because we consume criticism as a feedback. Even if it is intended to be mischievous, we take the good ones, we apply it to what we are doing because there is no government that is perfect anywhere in the world,” Bwala added.