During the last week, the Nigerian mainstream media was awash with reports that Babatunde Fashola said President Buhari had done better than the United States (US) government in terms of infrastructure.
Gatekeepers News reports that various Nigerian newspapers and online media (excluding Gatekeepers News) said last week that Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), claimed that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari had done better than the US government in terms of infrastructure.
Some social media commentaries even went further to say that the minister claimed that Nigeria is better than the US in terms of infrastructure.
Fashola allegedly made the claim at the All Progressives Congress (APC) Special Ministerial Conversational Conference, which was held in Kano State, northwest Nigeria, on Thursday, January 27, 2022. The conference is an initiative of the party to create awareness of its achievements in the last six years.
How accurate are the media reports?
A video of the event obtained by Gatekeepers News reveals that the minister may have been quoted out of context.
His words: “From six years ago, this government, led by President Buhari, as far infrastructure is concerned, has been doing what the United States government is still trying to do. They [US government] are still trying to pass their infrastructure bill, and they’re still fighting, if you follow their [American] politics.”
Following the reports and commentaries that he claimed that “Nigeria’s infrastructure was better than America’s infrastructure”, Fashola said he was quoted out of context.
He responded to a journalist’s question on the issue during an inspection tour of the ongoing rehabilitation of the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano Dual Carriageway Sections I to III.
The minister noted that no one in their right mind would claim that Nigeria has better infrastructure than the US because the latter is a much wealthier nation. He added that the American infrastructure is “well ahead” of Nigeria.
Fashola 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.
“What I was talking about at the presentation with the APC Youth 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.”
The minister went further to describe the context from which he commented that the Buhari administration has been doing what the US government is still trying to do. He stated that the American government is struggling to get parliamentary authorisation for infrastructure spending, but the Nigerian government has cooperated with its legislative branch.
“That’s the first point I was making, and that in a democracy, you always need the parliament to authorise what you spend on infrastructure, and so I was making the comparison that Buhari has been able to get his parliament to authorise his spending,” he said.
“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 parliament to start what we are already doing. I didn’t say our infrastructure is better than theirs.”
Indeed, the Nigerian legislature, which is controlled by the president’s party—APC—has been overwhelmingly cooperative with the Buhari-led executive on spending bills.
However, the US government has not had much luck, as Fashola rightly pointed out. In fact, the struggle was on for nearly six years. Then-President Donald Trump, a Republican, had vowed to revamp the country’s infrastructure in his 2016 victory speech. He had campaigned on a $1 trillion infrastructure plan.
“We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it,” he said in his victory speech.
However, Trump’s promise never materialised as he never reached a deal with the American congress. Any hope of an agreement died in May 2019 when the often-combative former president walked out of a White House meeting with Democrats on the issue.
During his time in the White House, Trump often used the phrase “Infrastructure Week” to promote his wish to pass a spending bill. On May 22, 2019, the New York Times described the phrase as a “long-running joke”. CNN agreed with their American counterparts, reporting on May 26, 2019, that the phrase was a “running joke”. The TV station said that Trump’s White House had declared an Infrastructure Week no fewer than seven times.
The former American president did not deliver his long-term ambition till he left office in January 2021 after his re-election bid failed.
Notwithstanding, checks by Gatekeepers News reveal that Fashola wasn’t entirely correct when he claimed that the US government “is still trying to pass their infrastructure bill and they’re still fighting if you follow their politics”. This is because the US government was eventually successful with its infrastructure spending push.
Trump’s successor, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, was able to rally members of his party and Republicans to support the same $1 trillion infrastructure plan that his predecessor could not see through the finish line.
The US Senate passed the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill on August 10, 2021. After months of delay, the House of Representatives followed suit on November 5, 2021. Biden signed the bill into law on November 15, 2021.
Although Fashola wrongly claimed that the US government was “still fighting” to pass its infrastructure bill, he was correct when he claimed that the Buhari-led administration had been doing what the US government was still trying to do in terms of achieving legislative approval for infrastructure spending bills.
VERDICT
The media reports that Fashola said Buhari has done better than the US government in terms of infrastructure LACK CONTEXT and are, therefore, MISLEADING.
See video of Fashola and what he said at the conference below;
Video of Fashola making further clarification during inspection of the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Highway project below;
