PDP To APC: COVID-19 Not Excuse For Your Failure

The evolving coronavirus pandemic has again exposed the incapacity of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC and the urgent need for the government to seek help as the ship of the state is about to run aground, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP alleged on Sunday.

Addressing a press conference in Abuja, the PDP’s spokesman, Mr. Kola Ologbondinyan regretted what he described as the failure of the administration to take heed to past advices and decision to exclude the country’s best from governance.

He rebuffed the government’s excuses of COVID-19 as the cause of the challenges saying that the government’s mismanagement of the good economy handed over to it was what brought the country to its knees.

He said:

“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.

“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 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.

It is therefore clear that our nation is doomed under APC and our challenges can only get worse under this dysfunctional party.

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.

“In the light of the above, the PDP resolves as follows:

“Our Party, the PDP holds the Buhari administration responsible for the devaluation of the naira due to its failures.

“President Buhari should immediately end all tactless economic policies, accept failure, seek help and get more competent hands to work on the economy, develop strategies to strengthen the naira as well as paddle our nation out of the current economic quandary. 

“The Government should end its exclusionist policies and allow competent Nigerians, who are now being engaged by other countries, to help out.

“The Buhari-led APC administration should immediately cut down the size of its over-bloated government and plug waste by clipping the luxury expenditure of the Presidency, cabinet ministers and other executive appointees while channeling billions of naira to be saved to national economy.

“The Buhari-led administration should also shelve every plan of increasing the already excruciating taxes including the Value Added Tax (VAT) which it increased from 5% to 7.5%, with an attendant high costs on essential goods and services.

“The Federal Government, in its plans to review the 2020 budget, should not touch items that have direct bearings on the welfare of Nigerians but immediately cut all over-bloated executive votes as well as expunge paddings and fraudulently duplicated items, which our party initially pointed out in the budget.

“The Buhari Presidency should immediately take steps to recover the over N14 trillion stolen by APC cabals, including the N9trillion stolen oil money as detailed in the leaked NNPC memo and channel same to social palliatives.

“The PDP is worried over allegations of corruption in handling of the N1.3 trillion set aside to cushion the effect of COVID-19 on the economy. Our party demands ultimate transparency. The Federal Government should come clean on the source of the intervention, the specific intervention projects where the fund will apply, the level of involvement of other tiers of government and private stakeholders, as well as the mode of disbursements and monitoring.

“The PDP demands that the COVID-19 interventions be allocated to the three tiers of government for effective delivery and monitoring.

“Furthermore, the PDP calls on all economic stakeholders, particularly in the private sector, to immediately rally to articulate solutions and palliative measures, since it is clear that the Buhari-led APC government is clueless and has no solution to offer.

“The PDP urges the economic stakeholders to articulate ways to effectively diversify our economy and provide jobs using the all-inclusive measures implemented by PDP administrations to effectively grow the economy as well as successfully handle emergencies such as the Ebola virus disease.”

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