1. Benin-Ore Road lamentations are over: For as long as most of us can remember,
Christmas season was a time of lamentations for most travellers to the Eastern
part of Nigeria. The Benin-Ore road was the main reason for those lamentations
as travellers spent hours upon hours stranded on that axis; there were even
instances where passengers had no choice but to spend Christmas on Benin-Ore
traffic.
The Jonathan administration was the first to comprehensively
tackle the reconstruction of Benin-Ore road. Today, most travellers can confirm
to us that their 2013 road travel to Eastern Nigeria is most likely the best
they've had in years.
2. For many years, it was an annual ritual for Nigerians to
begin experiencing strange and annoying fuel scarcities during festive period.
Also, before the Jonathan administration, many parts of Eastern, South-south
and Northern Nigeria lived with perennial fuel shortages and where fuel was
available it was sold well above government approved price. With Jonathan, all
that changed; the Aba depot was resuscitated after years of neglect, leading to
an abundance of fuel in the East. Under Jonathan, NNPC commenced the shipment
of fuel to Northern Nigeria by rail even as the Kaduna refinery continued
production. Throughout the 2013 festive season
there was an abundance of fuel all over Nigeria.
3. Aviation: Most Nigerian airports are now wearing a new-look,
that’s a fact. Due to the Biafra experience, most successive administrations
were reluctant to resume international flight operations directly to Eastern Nigeria,
though they kept making promises. Jonathan fulfilled that promise and
today,Akanu Ibiam Airport is a functional international Airport.
4. Agriculture: In the past, the post of Agriculture minister
was reserved for politicians from certain parts of the country whose sole
purpose was to oversee the fraudulent distribution of fertilizer. President
Goodluck Jonathan took a chance and appointed a technocrat to lead Nigeria's
Agricultural revolution. Today, Nigeria’s agriculture is growing in leaps and bounds;
even the international community took notice and went on to name Jonathan's
Agriculture minister Akinwumi Adesina as Forbes African person of the year.
5. Boko Haram: When the sect turned really violent in 2009,
Nigeria did not have a formidable Anti-terrorism network. Boko Haram carried
out attacks at will; between 2011 and 2012, as President Jonathan was
struggling to build a functional anti-terrorism system, the terrorists became bolder
as bombings and attacks on places of worship occured on a near weekly basis. However,
by 2013, Nigeria got it right with the creation of a formidable domestic anti-terrorism
network. What it took nations like Israel or the USA decades to build, Jonathan
achieved that in roughly 2 years. Throughout 2013, no single church was bombed.
Boko Haram has been disorganised and reduced to rag tag guerrilla fighters that
take pride in attacking vulnerable and innocent Nigerians of any religious
faith. Occasionally, they team up with Alqaeda fighters and organise bold
attacks on Nigerian military facilities. However, the Nigerian military has
constantly repelled such attacks and inflicted huge casualties on the
insurgents.
6. Successful Privatization of Electricity: In spite of monumental opposition from those that benefited from the rot in the system.
WHERE PDP HAS FAILED.
If the PDP has failed in any area it's in the way our great party has allowed
opposition forces to gain and retain firm control on the formal and informal
media space including electronic, print and social media. The opposition now
has substantial leverage in stirring up negative emotions among Nigerians via
respective media platforms. Our party’s spokes people have been largely reactionary,
only coming out to clear things up when the harm has already been done. Also,
perhaps we have entrusted our own information dissemination platforms on a few
Egg heads that are probably overwhelmed with the multiple media attack
mechanisms employed by the opposition.
-pdp.blogger@gmail.com
