Nigeria’s main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), has described the list of President Muhammadu Buhari’s achievements in 2021 as a ‘joke of the year.’
Recall that on Thursday, December 30, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, held a press conference where he stated that despite the challenges in 2021, the Buhari administration made “tremendous” progress in fighting insecurity and growing the economy. He also highlighted “major achievements” which he said the Buhari administration recorded in 2021.
In reaction to this, PDP described these achievements as “a joke of the year, a litany of lies and another celebration of falsehood by a failed administration.”
PDP spokesperson, Debo Ologunagba, in a statement on Thursday said, “the performance claim by the APC government can only be a product of delusions of grandeur; a joke of the year, as the word on the street where the real Nigerians are, is completely at variance with the fabricated lies and imaginary performance indices contained in the report.”
“Is it not unpardonable that instead of facing its failures to secure our nation, the APC-led government which is still harbouring a self-confessed terrorism apologist, is celebrating the mass killings currently going on in our country by engaging in self-praise in the face of failure while terrorists continue to ravage our nation?
“On the economy, the APC government had become so addicted to the falsehood that it had forgotten that Nigerians are aware that the PDP government handed over a $550 billion economy (largest in Africa and 26th globally) and a diversified economy to the APC in 2015. Today, our nation has become the poverty capital of the world due to the mismanagement, corruption, and recklessness of the APC government.
“In 2015, Nigeria’s external debt was $7.3 billion. Today under the clueless APC government, in just over six years, the external debt has reached over $38 billion and counting, with no corresponding investment in the economy or infrastructure,” the statement read in part.
PDP said further that the poverty rate in Nigeria is 71 percent as against 32 percent when the APC government took over in 2015 while between January and September 2021, over $1.8 billion was expended on debt services.
“It is self-evident that only the APC gangsters can claim to have performed in the face of life discounting experiences of the ordinary Nigerians. Thankfully Nigerians now know them for who they are,” Ologunagba added, noting that the APC government has nothing to say to the fact that under its watch, the naira has collapsed from N198 to a dollar handed over to it in 2015 to over N500 today; that the pump price of fuel has risen from N87 per liter in 2015 to N165 per liter today.
“Furthermore, it is ludicrous that the APC government claimed to be fighting corruption when it has become the haven of compromised and corrupt politicians.
“Evidently, that is why it has no answer to reports of how APC leaders and their cronies stole over N25 trillion from various government agencies. It also explains why the APC government has failed to prosecute its officials and APC leaders openly indicted for corruption.”
The opposition party said the infrastructural projects listed by the APC-led government “exists only on paper as achievements and even attempted to appropriate projects by PDP administrations. The PDP challenges the APC government to name one landmark project it conceptualized, commenced and completed in the last six years.”
The PDP said the APC is “oblivious of the pains and tears that their almost seven years of proven disappointment have inflicted on Nigerians,” adding that it will be voted out of office in 2023.
