May 29: Apologize To Nigerians For Your Tragic Failures – PDP Tells Buhari

…Counsels him to avoid false performance claims

BY GRACE ANYANWU, ABUJA – The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has counseled President Muhammadu Buhari to apologize to Nigerians for the tragic failures of his administration in wrecking the once robust and cohesive nation, imposing hardship and creating acute despondency across the country in the last five years.

The party also counseled President Buhari to avoid false performance claims and empty promises on the celebration of May 29 Inauguration Day.

The PDP stressed that President Buhari should also address the manifest manipulations, bloodletting, intimidation, coercions, abuse of power and human right violations that characterized the 2019 Presidential elections as such is the only way to achieve a healing in the national polity.

A statement by the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, further advised President Buhari against living in denial of the ugly fact that his administration and his “dysfunctional” All Progressives Congress (APC) had deserted, betrayed and abandoned underprivileged Nigerians, particularly the youth, after the APC deceived them with false promises to grab power in 2015.

The PDP further urged Mr. President not to allow his handlers to push him into sugarcoating the colossal failures of the last one year, which had been characterized by humongous corruption, worsened insecurity and economic hardship, while the President, who had promised to lead from the front, recedes deeper into the luxury and safety of Aso Presidential villa

The statement further states; “Our party calls on President Buhari not to give room for presidential advisers to further ridicule his office by making him read another windy speech that would be laced with vacuous promises, doctored performance claims and myriads of incorrect and unsupported statistics that would end up being at total variance with the harsh realities on ground. 

“Mr. President should know that he cannot use the COVID-19 pandemic as excuse for failure as his administration had since lost grip of the security and economic situation in our country even before the outbreak of the scourge. 

“Nigerians hope that President Buhari would always recall that the PDP handed over a robust economy which was rated as one of the fastest growing in the world, only for him to bring our nation to its knees as the world’s poverty capital and a debtor country within a space of five years.

“President Buhari should use the occasion to reflect that his administration had ruined our productive sector with harsh policies leading to closure of businesses, dearth in foreign and domestic investments and acute unemployment, with over 40 million job losses. 

“Mr. President should contemplate on the alarm raised by the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige, that unemployment rate under this administration will hit a devastating 33.5 percent this year.

“Mr. President should also reflect that under his watch, our naira which was valued at N160 to a dollar under the PDP, fell to N500 and then to the current N390; that his administration increased the price of fuel from where the PDP left it at N87 per liter to N145 and only reduced it to N125 after much pressure from our party; that his government increased the Value Added Tax (VAT) from 5% to 7.5%, despite the attendant spike in costs of food and essential services,” the PDP added.

The party urged the President to pause and ponder over the fact that whereas the PDP administration paid off foreign debts and grew the nation’s economy; his administration has continued to accumulate debts and depleting the foreign financial instruments with reckless abandon.

The PDP further said: “It is appalling that in the last five years, the Buhari Presidency cannot point to any landmark development project it initiated and completed in any part of the country. 

“Instead, what we get is a chaotic federal executive that resorts to recycling of imaginary achievements and attempting to appropriate PDP’s projects in critical sectors of our economy.”

The PDP therefore urges President Buhari to align with the expectations of Nigerians by apologizing for his failures and getting more competent hands to manage the affairs of the nation in the remaining three years of his administration.