Obasanjo hands over report on strategic devt plan to Buhari

Buhari and Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, yesterday, handed over  to the President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), a report of a strategic development plan containing templates that would assist the incoming government to rapidly achieve its objectives of taking the nation a notch higher.

Top on the list of the report were education, power sector, economy, security and infrastructure.

The report was a product of a research work embarked upon by the Centre for Human Security of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library on major social challenges facing Nigeria four months ago. The event which took place at the Buhari Support Organization, BSO’s office in Abuja had in attedance the chairman, Governing Board of the Centre for Human Security of Obasanjo Presidential Library, Professor Akin Mabogunje, who was incidentally the chairman of the committee; former Minister of Finance and Committees vice chairman, Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu, who presented volumes of the report to Buhari and Dr. Christopher Kolade, who headed the power committee.

Speaking to journalists at the end of the brief ceremony held behind closed doors, Mabogunje, who represented Chief Obasanjo said the report contained policy documents that would help the President-elect restructure Nigeria, revealing that Buhari was full of thanks for the documents.

He said: “Centre for Human Security of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Liberary has been working on a number of critical issues for the development of this country and they have now sent a delegation of those who have been involved with the preparation of those policy documents to talk to the President-elect and get him to appreciate what is being done to help his administration. That’s why we are here.

“We’ve looked  at education, security, economy, power and infrastructure. Those are the areas we’ve made recommendations and which we hope the new administration will be able to work on.”

“He (Buhari) was very happy that we’ve been thinking about how to help him hit the ground running and he expressed his appreciation for what we’ve been doing.”

Giving details of the reports, Dr. Kolade explained the long, medium and short terms goals of the report.

According to him, the strategic plan hoped to raise the country’s power generation to 10,000 MW within a short period of time.

Expanding thoughts on the development also, the Buhari’s media spokesperson, Mallam Garba Shehu said “the whole idea was that Obasanjo set up his own think-tank with the aim of carrying out a study on challenges facing the country in five key areas of Education, Power sector, Economy, Security and Infrastructure. The study was commissioned four months ago so that the outcome will be made available to the incoming administration after the election.”

He also stated that the president-elect expressed gratitude to Obasanjo for their kind gesture, however regretting that the outgoing regime of president Goodluck Jonathan had not done anything close to that.

“An appreciative President-elect expressed gratitude to Obasanjo and his team, describing their intervention as a great impetus for the incoming government.
Buhari regretted that the out-going government that is supposed to give him tips on how to take-off has done nothing so far.  He thanked the Obasanjo for their gesture, assuring them that his incoming administration will be needing their advice as time goes on”, Shehu said.