37. We are also improving our aviation infrastructure. We embarked on the remodelling of the terminal infrastructure in all 22 airports, and five new international airport terminals in Lagos, Kano Abuja, Enugu, and Port-Harcourt are under construction. To finance all of these, we are putting together a framework that will allow us tap our pension resources, which currently stands at about $27 billion for infrastructure investment.

38. Third, economic diversification is an important objective of the Jonathan Administration’s Transformation Agenda and so to this end, a lot of effort is being made to unleash the non-oil sector.

There is a revolution taking place in our Agriculture sector. We have redesigned the supply mechanisms of Agriculture inputs like fertilizers and seeds through an e-Wallet system that ensures about 70 percent of farmers have access to subsidized inputs, against 11 percent under the old system. We are also taking a value chain approach to food production, starting with Rice and Cassava. We’ve started the production of dry season rice and in 2013, rice production increased by dry season paddy of 1.22 million MT, adding to the 1.74 million MT wet season paddy. We have expanded production of High Quality Cassava to substitute imported wheat flour (up to 20% substitution) in the baking industry, and now we see a lot of private investment in High-Value Cassava processing from Cargill (for Starch) and Unilever (for Sorbitol).

In manufacturing, we launched the National Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP) with focus on the entire value chain of sub-sectors: Agro-processing (e.g. rice milling, sugar processing), Petrochemicals, Automobile, Textiles, and Cement. Nigeria is now a net exporter of cement and expanded cement output capacity from 2 million metric tonnes in 2002 to 28.5 million metric tonnes in 2013. We are also promoting foreign investments in manufacturing and we see Indorama’s $1.2 billion fertilizer plant at Onne, Procter & Gamble’s $250 million consumer goods plant in Ogun State, and SAB Miller’s $100 million brewery at Onitsha.

In the housing sector, we launched another revolution, the Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) in January 2014 to facilitate and guarantee mortgage liquidity to qualified financial institutions in a bid to close the housing gap. Through supporting mass housing programs, we hope the NMRC will provide up to 200,000 affordable mortgages within the next 5 years. Already, when we advertised for 10,000 mortgages, we received over 66,000 applications. We expect to create hundreds of thousands of jobs –good jobs for plumbers, carpenters, welders, architects, surveyors and designers in the housing sector. America and the UK long understood the value of the housing sector as a social good. We are only catching up now –reforming our land use and land titling systems, putting foreclosure laws in place to make it possible.

39. We are also making strong efforts to diversify our revenue base primarily through the mobilization of non-oil revenues. Tax revenue to GDP ratio is about 22% for middle-income African countries, and is estimated at about 20% or higher for emerging economies. Nigeria’s tax revenue to GDP ratio of 12% low in comparison. So we engaged McKinsey & Co to work with our tax collection agency, the FIRS to plug all tax leakages and increase tax revenues by at least 75 billion Naira (circa US$ 500 m).

40. Ladies and Gentlemen, knowledge and Information Technology are the wave of the future for the young. Nigeria is not left out of this telecom and technology revolution. From 450,000 landline phones in 2000, we now have 125 million mobile lines making delivery of government services to rural people in agriculture and health (e-Wallet and SOML) a possibility. Financial inclusion through mobile money is also fast becoming a reality. Communication of messages e.g. Ebola becomes a possibility. 33% of our youth are on the internet. E-Commerce is a reality, and over 500 km of fibre optic cables for broadband internet built, and about 50 government services are now being delivered by internet.

41. Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen, one of the most important set of reforms we are implementing are those designed to build institutions. We are plugging gaps in our regulatory framework through an anti-trust or competition Bill, a Harbours bill to regulate our maritime activities, a Roads Bill to create a Road Fund for maintenance of roads, and a PIB. We are building an NMRC for housing, a Development Bank of Nigeria for long term finance. Our financial management systems are being transformed and put on electronic platforms. We have the GIFMIS, IPPIS and TSA. These are designed to support a more transparent financial management and treasury system and reduce cash and paper transactions. We succeeded in weeding out about 53,000 ghost workers and pensioners from the government’s payroll through the IPPIS system which through biometrics, enabled us to verify government personnel and this has saved about $800 million.

42. We are also putting in place a National ID System-biometric and with a design to foster financial inclusion through a partnership with MasterCard. When these reforms are completed, we shall have at Federal level a modern set of institutions which we can then persuade those States that are not yet up to speed to adopt.