Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo says the struggle in Nigeria is that between good and evil, and not between the two major religions.
According to a statement on Sunday by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr Laolu Akande, the VP spoke at a public lecture organised by the Council of Chief of Imams, Ikeja Division in Lagos on Saturday.
The lecture was titled, “The role of Muslim leaders in the South-West towards achieving peaceful and successful 2019 elections.”
Osinbajo said, “I want to say to you that it’s a battle between good and evil. What we are fighting in this country is a battle between good and evil; it is not a battle between religions.
“Corruption is our major challenge. The people that steal Nigeria’s resources are both Christians and Muslims.”
He advised the religious leaders to continue to tell their followers to embrace peace and work for the unity of the country.
Osinbajo said prudent management of resources by the current administration had helped it achieve more in terms of infrastructure and development than the previous administrations.
He also said the government had invested heavily in social protection, describing it as the largest in the country’s history.
He disclosed that the government had spent over N2.7tn on capital expenditure in the last three years, pointing out that it is the highest amount ever spent on capital in the history of Nigeria.
The VP listed some of the infrastructure projects to include the Lagos-Kano Standard Gauge Railway, the Lagos-Ibadan Dual Carriageway and the Second Niger Bridge.
Osinbajo said the administration had been able to achieve this through prudent management of resources, despite earning 60 per cent revenue less than the previous administration when the price of crude oil was high.
He explained that through the N-Power Programme, 500,000 young graduates had been engaged by the Federal Government.
He said similar successes had been recorded in the Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme, which includes the TraderMoni Scheme, the Conditional Cash Transfer, CCT, and the Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, which currently feeds over nine million public primary school pupils in 26 states.
Speaking on the impact of the TraderMoni scheme – the N10,000 interest- and collateral-free loans to petty traders nationwide, the Vice President said two million petty traders nationwide will benefit from the microcredit scheme by the end of the year.
