Count Your Days in Office, PDP Tells APC

• Says ruling party’s policies lack coherence

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said  Nigerians have suffered more under the weight of the anti-people policies of the All Progressives Congress (APC) than in the 16 years of its reign.

While reacting to the criticism by APC over former President Goodluck Jonathan’s claim that his administration performed well in office, PDP said there are no basis for comparison between its regime and the current one in terms of performance.

For instance, PDP said while Nigeria was adjudged the largest economy in Africa valued at over $500billion during the Jonathan-led administration, the ruling party has through a combination of the incoherent policies and incompetence, significantly shrunk the size of the Nigerian economy.

In a statement by the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Dayo Adeyeye, PDP said the list of achievements of the Jonathan administration, and indeed past PDP administrations, were too numerous to mention and completely dwarf the wasted years of APC’s governance.

“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 and do business under. As a result, the ruling party’s days at the helm of affairs are numbered,” he said.

APC leadership and senior members of the ruling party have responded to former President Jonathan’s claim that his administration was better than the present one, describing it as a fallacy.

However, the PDP said the position taken by the APC leadership and President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman, Garba Shehu as “one borne out of ignorance, lacking in depth and devoid of the sort of critical thinking.”

The party said despite being in charge of the executive and possessing a majority in both houses of the National Assembly, the APC has failed to add anything to or strengthen the anti-corruption framework and infrastructure of the country.
It also said the Jonathan administration had maintained a single digit inflation rate for several years, adding that inflation stood at 9.6 per cent 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. This had led to the skyrocketing of the price of goods, services and food items thereby making staples unaffordable to millions of Nigerians.

“It is shameful and embarrassing that having been in power for two and a half years, the ruling party is unable to point to cogent, convincing and data driven achievements.

“Instead, it has spent the bulk of its time designing and implementing a communication strategy around massive propaganda, half truths and outright falsehood in an attempt to continually deceive the Nigerian people.

“For the sake of 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 Buhari can be measured as performing better than any PDP administration since 1999.

“As at May 29, 2015, Nigeria was the No. 1 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.

“However, since the inauguration of the Buhari administration, investors have voted with their feet having been discouraged by the inchoate and incoherent policies being implemented by the APC-led federal government.”
On the fight against corruption, PDP accused the APC of taken a pedestrian approach to fighting corruption by engaging in media trials rather than actively prosecuting cases in court,

According to PDP, the approach has had an adverse effect on the country with the Egmont Group, an international financial intelligence sharing anti-corruption body, using the Nigerian prosecution agencies’ penchant for sharing sensitive information with the media as a basis for Nigeria’s suspension from the group.