“The All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Buhari Presidency have finally wrecked our nation’s economy and there is no hope in sight under their control”, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said.
The party went further to say that APC and Buhari Presidency have turned Nigeria into a beggar nation and the world’s poverty capital.
According to the opposition party, Buhari and the APC achieved this through “their inherent recklessness and lack of capacity to articulate strategies that will sustain and grow our hitherto robust economy which they took over from the PDP in 2015.”
The party stated this during a media conference in Abuja on Sunday in response to the recent devaluation of Naira by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The text of the event which was signed by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan read:
“Nigerians are all aware that before the PDP left office in 2015, our party had succeeded in growing our economy with policies and programmes that boosted private sector participation to the extent that Nigeria was ranked the third fastest-growing economy, after China and Qatar, with capacity to lend to other countries.
“Today, the sheer incompetence, greed, reckless policies and deep corruption of the APC have reversed all these gains and destroyed our national economic capacities to the extent our nation can no longer finance our national budget.
“Our nation is currently in shambles with a drifting economy, a devalued currency (N380 to a dollar), collapsed infrastructure, a frightening 23.1 per cent unemployment rate, high cost of essential goods, increased morbidity rate, reduced life expectancy and a despondent citizenry leaving our country in droves.
“This situation is worsened with the reckless foreign borrowing by the APC and its administration which today stands at an alarming $108 billion with no productive repayment plan; funds which have been exposed as being frittered and stolen by APC leaders and the cabal.
“It is on record that the APC, as a party, has never made any useful suggestion or contribution towards good governance. Of course it has no such propensity, being only a power-grabbing vehicle fabricated by treasury looters that have no interest in the welfare of Nigerians.
“More distressing is that the APC Federal Government has become overwhelmed, confused and now resorts to uncoordinated knee-jerk measures and lame excuses such as trying to heap the blames of our economic woes just on the COVID-19.
“It is however instructive to note that even before the COVID-19, our economy was already in shambles and had been on a free fall in the last five years, due to the incompetence and reckless policies of the Buhari administration.
“It is indeed wearisome that the Buhari administration had chosen to be laidback in the face of serious issues of governance. Nigerians can recall that when oil price dropped to $52 per barrel, below the $57 benchmark for the 2020 N10.95 trillion budget, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, while briefing newsmen at the end of the Federal Executive Council meeting on March 4, 2020, admitted that the Government was not taking any measures but waiting, according to her, for a “reasonable time” to act.
“The minister’s declaration only confirmed that the APC Government failed to proactively engage other players in the international oil and gas market to adopt quick measure that would have protected our economy from the fallout of the international price war that triggered oil price crash, which now slumped to an alarming $28 per barrel.
“It is worrisome that while other countries quickly adopted measures to ease liquidity, the APC administration remained laidback and helpless, only to resort to knee-jerk measures.
“The result was that last week, not a single Foreign Portfolio investor participated in the Open Market Auction conducted by the CBN. That was a huge vote of no confidence on our system. The APC government later responded with a desperate measure of devaluing our currency to N380 to 1.USD at the Investor and Exporters (1&E) window; a development that has put our economy under more stress.
“It is therefore clear that our nation is doomed under APC and our challenges can only get worse under this dysfunctional party.”
The PDP also expressed worries over allegations of corruption in handling of the N1.3 trillion set aside to cushion the effect of COVID-19 on the economy.
Demanding that their should ultimate transparency in the handling of the fund, it called on the Federal Government to come clean on the source of the intervention, the specific intervention projects where the fund would applied, the level of involvement of other tiers of government and private stakeholders, as well as the mode of disbursements and monitoring.
It also demanded that the COVID-19 interventions be allocated to the three tiers of government for effective delivery and monitoring.
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