Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, has denied saying that Nigeria’s achievements in infrastructure have surpassed that of the United States.
The minister said America is a much richer nation and their infrastructure is well ahead of Nigeria.
Fashola, at the All Progressives Congress (APC) Youth Ministerial Conference in Kano State on Thursday, had said that the current President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC administration had achieved what America “is trying to do in terms of infrastructure”.
The statement by the former Lagos State governor was greeted with condemnations from Nigerians.
However, Fashola, while speaking to newsmen during an inspection tour of the ongoing Abuja-Kaduna-Kano road project, said he didn’t say Nigeria’s infrastructure is better than that of the United States.
He said: “The first point to make is that I didn’t say that Nigeria’s infrastructure was better than America’s infrastructure because certainly anybody who knows what he is doing will know that America is a much richer nation, their infrastructure is well ahead of Nigeria.
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“What I was talking about at the presentation with the All Progressives Congress, (APC) Youth Ministerial Conference was about the challenges of infrastructure and that it is universal, every country commits to infrastructure as a legitimate way to create work, to grow the economy and distribute wealth as we have seen here.
“That’s the first point I was making, and that in a democracy you always need the parliament to authorize what you spend on infrastructure and so I was making the comparison that Buhari has been able to get his Parliament to authorize his spending, and that is why we were even able to gather here (at the Special Ministerial Conversational Conference). But that the American government is struggling to get authorisation from their own parliament to start what we are already doing. I didn’t say our infrastructure is better than theirs.”
Fashola added that the “deliberate” misreporting of his clear statement of fact and the almost spontaneous orchestration of reactions based on the misrepresentation on the social media should send a clear warning to right-thinking and well-meaning Nigerians about the type of campaign which the main opposition wants to run towards the 2023 election.
“It’s a campaign of lies and misinformation. The main opposition has a very uncomfortable relationship with the truth, so they are going to run a campaign of lies and disinformation, so we must be ready for it.
“The progress we are making here make them very uncomfortable, so they can’t disprove that work is going on, they can’t disprove that infrastructure is being developed so they are going to look for every way to distort and misinform the public,” he said.
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