By Cross Udo
The Presidency yesterday took a swipe at governors of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over their verdict on the performance of President Muhammadu Buhari whose retention of the Petroleum Resources portfolio they had blamed for the revenue leakages in the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited.
The PDP governors had in their monthly meeting hosted by the Abia State Governor, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu in Aba, accused the President Buhari’s-led administration of inflicting untold hardship on Nigerians.
But in a swift reaction to the PDP Governors position, the Presidency in a statement titled: “Issues from the PDP fantasy communique from Umuahai,” issued by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, described the forum’s communique as a
“a work of fiction by those who truly believe black is white and one plus one equals three.”
The Presidency maintained that the statement was of “the delusional” who sought to cover up “the serial and criminal failures of the PDP’s long and damaging period in office, which the Muhammadu Buhari administration and All Progressives Congress (APC) have strived these past seven years to repair.”
The statement alleged that under the PDP, the nation had an army full of phantom soldiers whose pay, it alleged went to PDP politicians’ pockets while the nation’s soldiers were under-resourced and died in the fight against terrorist insurgents as it noted that international allies refused to supply Nigeria kit and military aid.
The Presidency statement added: “Today with the APC, the army is resourced, we have fighter jets from our partners, Boko Haram is being driven from every inch of Nigerian territory, and ISWAP’s leader eliminated in a Nigerian airstrike.
“We cannot ignore how PDP politicians sought – and continue to seek – to inflame ethnic and religious tensions by refusing to even proffer a solution to the herder-farmer clashes which became most prevalent under their misrule.
“Today with APC in government, there are ranches on Federal land and in state land where there is the willingness to establish them. Clashes are reduced. Lives are saved, and livelihoods are enriched.
“We will always remember how PDP politicians intentionally encouraged and exploited the black market in currency exchange to convert ill-gotten gains to foreign currency and undermine our national currency, then spirited their funds abroad in their billions and into foreign bank accounts.
“Today with APC we support our national currency; we have achieved self-sufficiency in rice and fertilizer production; we refuse to allow greedy politicians and businessmen to hide their money overseas, and instead build an economy here in Nigeria for all.
“We will always know how PDP politicians raided the NNPC, consistently failed to pay into the Federation Account and, in the last year of PDP misrule, $20 billion dollars was simply found “missing”.
“Today with APC, funds from NNPC are directly and transparently used to fund social and health programmes – such as COVID-19 response, the construction of roads, bridges and rail, and equipping of hospitals to cope with new and existing challenges.
“And then there are those PDP leaders in attendance who signed the Communique. Who would trust such people with the running of our country?
“Who can believe a word these people say, as they looked outwardly stylish but harrowed by power-sharing and other troubles inwardly?
“These people, who play politics of division and hate, create communal disturbances, need to change.”
The Presidency accused the PDP Governors of pretending that Covid-19 and its consequences on the economy never occurred, reminding them that the pandemic brought suffering to the world.
It added: “The Governors reeled out numbers on the economy, pretending as if the once-in-a-life COVID-19 pandemic, with its huge and devastating effect, disrupting global supply chains, uniformly battering the world economy never happened.
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“Covid-19 brought suffering and hardship to the doorstep of the entire global community-less maybe, of the affluent and pretentious PDP Governors-and to the credit of this administration, Nigeria’s economy recovered faster and stronger than the entire world ever imagined.
“Check the facts and leave the politics: What does the country get with this kind of gimmick?”
Recall that the PDP-GF communique had maintained, after reviewing “the excruciating hardship and suffering being meted out to Nigerians by a failed APC led Federal Government; the near collapse of the APC as a viable political party, the readiness of the PDP to take over and offer qualitative leadership options to rescue the nation,” noting that life under the former ruling party was far better than today.
The communique added: “We lament the terrible pain and hardship facing Nigerians in virtually all aspects of life. The meeting noted that life was much better in 2015 under the PDP than today under the APC as exemplified in the following Comparative Indicators obtained mainly from the National Bureau of Statistics:
“Diesel who is critical for running of SMEs was N131.47 in 2015, it now costs above N700; fuel: Official and Black-Market was N87/155 in 2015, it now costs N167/350; Aviation Fuel/Air Ticket Rate on Domestic Flights was N110 per Litre/N18,000 in 2015, it now hovers around N700 per Litre/N70,000, where available. Indeed, the scarcity of fuel which has resulted in loss of several man hours is a disgrace to Nigeria.
“The collapse of the National Grid (126 times in 7 years – (June 2015 to March 2022) and its consequences for non-availability of power is most unfortunate.
