BY SEGUN ADEBAYO – The Makinde-Daura Presidential Campaign Organisation (MDPCO) has berated President Bola Tinubu’s triumphant rhetoric surrounding the nation’s currency, declaring that the administration is “celebrating an imaginary rescue of the Naira” while actively blind to its catastrophic reality.
In a blistering critique of current economic policies, the group said the attempt by President Tinubu to rewrite Nigeria’s recent catastrophic economic history is an audacious evasion of responsibility, an insult to the intelligence and collective memory of Nigerians, who have endured the devastating consequences of his administration’s economic mismanagement of our national patrimony.
The MDPCO said the presidency must halt its premature victory laps and face the compounding hardships confronting everyday Nigerians, noting that it is unfortunate the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is shamelessly seeking public applause for an imaginary rescue of a currency his policies destroyed
Instead of manufacturing illusions of economic stability, the MDPCO insists the government must take direct responsibility for the currency’s ongoing collapse, even as it argued that artificial interventions and superficial market fixes cannot mask the deeper, systemic rot eroding the nation’s purchasing power.
It further stated that for millions of citizens, the reality is not a rescued currency, but a crushing cost-of-living crisis driven by a plummeting Naira, warning that deflection and denial will only accelerate the country’s economic drift.
Urging the administration to pivot away from public relations triumphs and instead implement transparent, structural reforms that confront the root causes of inflation, fiscal mismanagement, and currency volatility, the MDPCO said Tinubu’s claim that Nigerians would have needed wheelbarrows to purchase ordinary food items but for his intervention, is a callous historical distortion and another reason Nigerians should vote him out in 2027.
In a statement signed by its Richard Nnanna Ihediwa, Director of Strategic Communications, the MDPCO said: “Mr. President, you cannot preside over the destruction of the purchasing power of our national currency and turn around to seek public applause.
“In case you forgot, Mr President, you inherited an official exchange rate of approximately ₦461 to the US dollar on May 29, 2023. Your abrupt and poorly sequenced economic reforms, particularly the removal of petroleum subsidy and the unification of foreign exchange windows, triggered a tragic depreciation of the naira to nearly ₦2,000 to a dollar.
“One wonders which economic catastrophe as you claimed in Uyo, would have been worse than what Nigerians are passing through under you as their wages, savings and purchasing power evaporated; cost of food, transportation, housing and essential commodities and services spiralled beyond their reach.
“Does President Tinubu have any empathy towards thousands of Nigerians who lost their lives because they could not afford life-saving food and medications under his administration? Mr. President, take responsibility rather than create an imaginary worse tragedy!”
Taking further swipe at the administration’s economic performance, the MDPCO said: “Even more outrageous is the President’s assertion that a dollar exchanging for ₦1,340 is “pocketable”; and applaudable economic recovery, when Nigerians cannot afford food, medications and basic necessities; at a time the N70,000 National Minimum Wage can barely afford a bag of rice, and when Nigerians are working harder but getting poorer by the day.
“The real test of economic recovery is whether Nigerians can afford to live better, not simply whether the naira can exchange for more dollars now than when he plunged it into the abyss.
“Is it not provocative that President Tinubu could say that the naira is pocketable and that the economy is flourishing, when over 140 million Nigerians (63% of the population) live in poverty, with grim picture of infrastructure deficits standing at $2.3 trillion, and public debt soaring to a record ₦166.7 trillion on account of his insatiable appetite for foreign loans?”
Insisting that a President seeking re-election must defend his actual record, not campaigning on falsehood and imaginary heroism, the MDPO said from President Tinubu’s claims, it is clear that his administration can only lead Nigeria to a total economic collapse if by any stroke of imagination, it is re-elected.
It also said Nigeria urgently needs is a fundamental reset, as articulated in the RESET NIGERIA Agenda presented by the Presidential Candidate of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Engr. Seyi Makinde, assuring that the RESET Agenda contains a fundamental difference between the current defence of economic hardship and a clear pathway to recovery built around the welfare of citizens on the principles of “Stop the Loss, Recover Value and Build Systems That Prevent Failures.”
The Organisation explained that under the RESET Nigeria Agenda, rising oil revenues must translate into better living conditions, not merely larger government borrowing while “affordable energy, reliable electricity, domestic refining, agricultural security, manufacturing, investment and job creation must become measurable instruments of economic recovery.”
Maintaining that through transparent oil revenue management, the wealth of our nation must work for its people< the MDPCO said as the 2027 elections approaches, the crossroads before Nigeria could not be more vivid, stating that Nigerians are caught between a leadership that celebrates the hollow mirage of voodoo economics while citizens weep, and a bold new dawn that restores productive capacity and national prosperity to the heart of the republic.
It said the nation’s oil wealth must cease to be a phantom blessing, and become a transparent engine that works tirelessly for the people, assuring that Engineer Seyi Makinde’s RESET Nigeria Agenda offers precisely this sanctuary of hope.
The MDPCO urged President Tinubu to bravely concede the failure of his tenure, and spare the nation the exhaustion of empty campaign scripts that ring hollow against the stark reality of everyday survival.
