Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has said that a four-year term is inadequate for political office holders to achieve their plans.
He stated this in a chat with Financial Times in Lagos, while answering a question on Nigeria’s manufacturing capabilities.
“There has been a lot of damage to the environment in terms of business and all that, but correcting that would take a while, don’t forget that we (this administration) are barely three years old. And we are focused on doing the right thing”, he said.
“I think that for anyone who is in office, it (four-year term) would be too small, because obviously you have all manner of plans and things to deliver. But my take is that the moment you have the right people and you put the right structures in place, you can do a lot, and I think we’ve been blessed with an incredibly good team.
On how the administration is tackling Nigeria’s security challenges, Osinbajo said: “We are dealing with that as well. And my take is that the way we are going about it is the right way, in other words, we are working with partners in the sub-region to ensure that we are able to stem the flow of small arms for example.
“We are also working on developing our local capacity. One of the strong initiatives that we are pushing is community policing; because a lot of the terrorism that you see are the sorts of opportunistic attacks that require local policing.
“And one of the strong initiatives that we are pushing is the whole question of the state police; more local and community policing, and we are working on those initiatives with the governors, like in the National Economic Council, which I have the privilege of chairing.
“We are trying to see how we can do more in terms of local policing, intelligence gathering, in order to be able to respond much more quickly to some of the threats that we see.
“For example, in Benue State, we have deployed Special Forces now to several of the places where we have the disturbances. So, it is an ongoing engagement, and, as I said, asymmetric threat of this nature means that we just have to keep planning ahead as much as we can.”
The Vice President also commented the incessant herdsmen/farmers clashes, stressing that it is a different type of problem to the issue of Boko Haram.
“This crisis did not start with the Buhari government. These clashes have been going on for years. I think we are at a point that we believe that the right response; our response, has to be robust to ensuring that we are able to keep communities safe, which is what is going on. We are doing that in various parts of the North central,” he added.
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