Buhari has achieved nothing in 2 years –PDP

From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said it is shameful and embarrassing that after more than two years in office, President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) cannot point to any tangible and verifiable achievement.

The party stated this in reaction to recent comments by APC spokesman, Bolaji Ojo-Abdullahi and other functionaries of the federal government faulting former President Goodluck Jonathan’s statement that his administration performed very well. The PDP, in a statement issued yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, said comments by the APC spokesman,  Special Assistant to the President on Media, Shehu Garba, former Ekiti State governor, Segun Oni and Director General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), Osita Okechukwu, seeking to rubbish Jonathan’s achievements as president lacks depth and borne out of ignorance.

The opposition party said instead of fulfilling its electoral promises to Nigerians,  the ruling party has spent a greater part of its time in designing and implementing a communication strategy founded on propaganda, half truth and outright falsehood in its determined bid to continually deceive the populace.  The PDP said: “For emphasis, we reiterate our position that the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan performed well during its term in office. There are no indices anywhere in Nigeria or, indeed, in the world, by which the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari can be measured as performing better than any PDP administration since 1999.

“As at May 29, 2015, Nigeria was the largest economy in Africa, valued at over $500 billion; but a combination of the incoherent policies and incompetence of the ruling party have significantly shrunk the size of the Nigerian economy since the inception of the current administration.

“As at May 29, 2015, Nigeria was the number one destination for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Africa. Up to that point, investors responded to the policies designed and implemented by the Jonathan administration by investing billions of dollars in the Nigerian economy,”the PDP stated.

The opposition party added that since the inception of APC administration in 2015, investors have left the country as a result of the “inchoate and incoherent” of the government.  It noted that whereas the Jonathan administration maintained a single digit inflation rate for several years, with inflation standing at 9.6 percent at the inception of the Buhari administration, “the incompetence of the current Economic Management Team has resulted in inflation rising as high as 18.72 per cent in January 2017, before settling at 16.1 per cent in July 2017.”

The main opposition party said it was not a coincidence that the last time Nigerians had to deal with the current level of widespread hunger and lack was when President Muhammadu Buhari held sway as military Head of State between 1984 and 1985. “The APC led Federal Government inherited an economy that had grown at an average of seven per cent per annum for the previous 10 years. Indeed, when President Buhari spoke at the Chatham House in February 2015, he admitted that the Nigerian economy had experienced growth for several years. At the time, several global economic experts projected Nigeria to be among the top seven growing economies in the world in 2016.

“However, the APC led Federal Government has managed to lead the nation to six consecutive quarters of economic recession without a coherent, cogent strategy to bring our economy out of the woods.”

Besides, the PDP said while the Jonathan administration was widely acclaimed for conducting free, fair and credible elections, same cannot be said of the APC administration.

Also,  the opposition party said while the Jonathan administration deployed technological tools like the Treasury Savings Account (TSA), Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), Integrated Payroll  and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), in the fight against corruption, in addition to institutions created by previous PDP administration to fight graft, “the present administration is paying lip service to the anti-corruption war.”

“It is important to point out, for instance, that Alhaji Bolaji Ojo-Abdullahi was a minister under the Jonathan administration, Chief Segun Oni was also a former member of our party on whose platform he rose to become governor of Ekiti State.

“Having served in such offices, such men to say PDP failed Nigerians. If these men and others of their ilk find it so convenient to deny their past, we wonder what they will say about the present in the near future.

“It is necessary to inform the ruling party that Nigerians are suffering under the weight of the anti-people policies they have been forced to live with and do business under. As a result, the ruling party’s days at the helm of affairs are numbered.

“The professional propagandists of the APC will realise too late that blaming the ills of the country on past administrations while doing nothing about them for four clear years will not save them on the day of judgement. And the day of reckoning is very much at hand,” PDP noted.

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