…NASS owes Nigerians conducive environment – Dogara
From: Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has assured that the Executive and the Legislature are collaborating on efforts that would eliminate bureaucracy in Nigeria towards establishing new businesses and giving them support is changing.
He added that Nigeria demonstrated through the rapid rise in the recent World Bank ranking what could be achieved by working together towards achieving any goal.
The Vice President stated this, on Monday evening, at an Impact Award event held at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, in Abuja, organised by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC).
The event was meant to recognise individuals, ministries, departments and agencies who contributed in making Nigeria rise to the position of 145 in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business ranking.
According to him, “We are working hard on the attitudes of bureaucrats and persons who have been charged with the responsibility of making things easy,” adding that the “whole business of processing pre-investment approvals and all of that should be with the view to making things easy not with a view to becoming an obstacle of sort.”
The Vice President commended the improved attitude of bureaucrats adding that government was working to ensure that continuous progress was made in that regard.
While commending the award recipients, Osinbajo informed them that “the next few weeks will involve a lot of doing” and urged them to brace up for more challenges in the next plan of action towards achieving greater ease of doing business environment.
On Nigeria improved ranking by the World Bank, he said, “There is absolutely nothing we cannot achieve as a people if we set our mind to it.”
Vice President Osinbajo acknowledged the role the National Assembly played in deciding that it was time to create an enabling environment for businesses.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, who spoke to State House correspondents after the event, said the National Assembly followed what he called the Delaware Principle in passing two bills aimed at facilitating ease of doing business in Nigeria.
In the words of Dogara, “It was contingent upon the National Assembly to do all we can within the shortest possible time we had to support government initiative in order to improve the ease of doing business in this country,” he said.
The Speaker said the National Assembly owed it as a duty to ensure a conducive environment was improve the business environment to attract more businesses and more foreign direct investments into Nigeria.
On the award given to the National Assembly at the event, he said it was not “absolutely necessary for the National Assembly to be given any award or to be recognized for doing the work they were elected to do.”
However, he said it would motivate the members and the other award recipients to worker harder.
Among other agencies that received the awards were the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, the Nigeria Immigration Service, the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS).