The Nigerian government has declared 2025 as the year of consolidation, while also highlighting the transformative measures put in place by the President Bola Tinubu administration in 2024.
Addressing the press at the first 2025 edition of the ministerial press briefing series, the Minister of Information and National Orientation also listed interventions made by the government.
Recall that the Tinubu administration, through the Ministry of Information introduced the ministrial briefing in 2024 which allows ministers appear before the Nigerian media to give account of themselves.
Idris said that Tinubu is determined to ensure that his administration engages and communicates robustly, and the Ministerial Briefing Series is one of the measures put in place to achieve the goal.
“This year 2025 is a year of consolidation, a year for building on the gains we have seen in the first 19 months of the administration,” he said.
The minister reminded Nigerians of the gains the administration has made as it proceeds into the mid-point of its tenure.
He mentioned some of the key areas to include fiscal, macroeconomic and legislative reforms, noting that fuel subsidy removal has helped plug leakages amounting to hundreds of billions of Naira annually.
The minister listed the targeted interventions to include the
Students Loan Fund, regional development, healthcare, passport reforms and Compressed Natural Gas.
On infrastructure development, the minister said that Nigeria is a vast construction site under Tinubu with over N2.5 trillion worth of road infrastructure projects approved by the Federal Executive Council.
On defence and security, the minister added, “In 2024, our security forces neutralized more than 8,000 terrorists and bandits, and arrested 11,600 others, with more than 10,000 weapons recovered.
“Additionally, about 8,000 kidnap victims were successfully rescued. We will continue to work to drive down the number of victims while scaling up our success stories in terms of deterrence, crime-solving, and prosecutions.”
He mentioned food security as another area the Tinubu administration has achieved a lot, adding, “Nigeria now has a Ministry of Livestock Development to harness what is potentially a multi-billion-dollar agricultural opportunity that can transform our rural communities and enrich and empower tens of millions of Nigerians, including women and youth. Indeed, the price of grains has dropped significantly across the country.”