Jonathan blames slow economic growth on unsteady policies

(NIGERIA) President Goodluck Jonathan, on Thursday, said failure of preceding governments to stick to well laid out long-term economic plans instead of emergency measures has resulted to slow national economic growth.

He spoke during the New Year church service, which he attended at the Dunamis International Gospel Centre, Area1, Garki, Abuja.

The President said his administration has tried as much as it could to revert to the old days when the economy was run on long term plans.

“For you to achieve anything, you must have a clear vision. Even if you look at what we have been doing as a nation, you will really see that before this time when the country used to have this 25 years plan, the budget was based on 25 years clear plan for the country.

“So you know where you are going for 25 years. Then it is broken down into five-year plan annual budget and we knew where we were going.

“But after sometime, things collapsed and we run government on emergency basis and you see government start wobbling.

“We are going back to those good days when we have vision. We have plan for agriculture, we have plan for industry, we have plan for automobile and many other areas.

“If you have a vision, any proposal that comes in, no matter how good they are, must fall into your vision for it to go through”, he stated.

He noted that Nigeria enjoyed calmer Christmas this year, as the authorities were determined and doing a lot underground to eventually overcome internal and external conspiracies in the fight against terrorism.

On the fight against corruption, Jonathan said government measures would be stepped up, as it was not an issue that could be overcome with a magic wand.

According to him, “We are coming out with programmes and plans to clean up. These are things that you don’t just use magical wand to wave it off, otherwise even before I became a President, there won’t have been corruption in Nigeria.

“It is not just about trying corruption cases and looking at one person, arrest the person and show him on television. It is about strengthening institutions and coming up with credible plans to make sure that anybody who gets involved with corruption, the system must have a way of detecting him and punishing him.” (DAILY INDEPENDENT)