President Muhammadu Buhari was right in describing the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as a haven for mismanagement and corruption, arrogance of power and self-aggrandisement.
According to the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO), attempts by the former ruling party to make itself look good in the eyes of the public is only self-serving and akin to ‘campaigning after the election’.
The group said in a statement signed by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, that there are enough facts on the ground to show that the President was accurate in his description of the party.
“We find it funny that the new PDP leadership again attempted to rewrite history in its response to the President’s rather apt description of 16 years of the party’s catastrophic rule.
“Here is a party that was so consumed with power that its leaders arrogantly told Nigerians that they would be in office forever. So President Buhari was right in admonishing members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to desist from the rambunctious behaviour that consumed PDP.
“It is indeed sad that inspite of suffering two consecutive electoral losses, the former ruling party is still arrogant enough to declare that it handed over a robust economy in 2015 when all Nigerians were witnesses to the unprecedented and unfortunate situation of 27 States being unable to pay workers salaries and retirees’ pensions inspite of trillions of naira in oil revenue.
“This was at a time the country had an oil boom yet was home to 112m people living in extreme poverty on 1 dollar (N160 at the time) a day, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
“It was also a period when the economy began to go on a free fall, yet Nigeria was spending $5bn annually on food importation with little or no effort to boost local food production capacity or improve on infrastructure”.
BMO added that President Buhari has since put the country on the path of sustainable growth in spite of harsh global economic realities.
“It is so easy for PDP elements and their allies to accuse APC of plunging Nigeria into recession in 2016, but we know that former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, in 2012 and 2013, dropped clear hints about an impending recession as a result of the manner the then PDP overlords were spending public funds without a thought for the future.
“And after taking the country out of recession in record time, the Buhari administration has steadily grown the non-oil sector in such a way that it is now contributing over 90 per cent to GDP figures.
“Today, the country has been spending less on food import and it’s not surprising that data published recently by a US agency showed that Nigeria produced 11.6 million metric tons of maize in 2021, the highest quantity in 60 years.
“Let us also add that there are fewer people living in extreme poverty in Nigeria in this period, according to World Poverty Clock (WPC), World Bank and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), compared to previous years; and this is as a result of the basket of poverty alleviation initiatives under the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP)
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“Even in terms of security, things are looking good with Nigeria ranking as high as 35 in the latest Global Firepower Index and has also seen a drop in terror-related casualties in recent years. All these because of the government’s commitment to tackling security challenges”.
The group insisted that Buhari has done so well that the ruling party has a lot of achievements to present to Nigeria as a scorecard in seven years compared to what PDP did in 16 years.(NAN)
