Austerity measures show PDP has failed –APC

The Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has lambasted the Peoples Democratic Party-led federal government for subjecting Nigeria to economic distress in 16 years of continuous oil boom.

The party said that the present austerity measures reeled out by the Minister of FINANCE, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, two months after almost 16 years of oil windfall, shows that the PDP cannot be trusted with the fate of a country seeking development and progress.

In a release in Lagos, signed by the state Publicity Secretary of the party, Joe Igbokwe, the APC said that it is lamentable that the PDP federal government in 16 years laid no foundation and built no worthwhile project that could help Nigeria survive the present economic crisis occasioned by the drop in crude oil price. According to the party, this speaks much of a party that is “daydreaming” of taking over a working and viable state like Lagos, with the aim of rendering it the same wrecked enclave it has made the rest of Nigeria today.

The APC said, “We note that while oil price skyrocketed in the last 16 years of PDP governance of the country, the people have been fed with wrecked infrastructures, grand reversal of the gains made during the previous era, a crumbling country, massive corruption, ineptitude and impunity.

“We note that in any sane and normal society, the providential windfall Nigeria gained from skyrocketing oil price would have been employed to built massive infrastructures such as roads, bridges, railways, schools, hospitals, refineries, industries, power generating plants, create massive jobs for the people and fight and reduce poverty. This is what obtains in countries that produce oil on such massive scale as Nigeria and even countries that are not so endowed.

“Nigerians note that while oil money flowed, the leaders and supporters of the PDP indulged in a free sharing spree and used every known corruptive means to mop up the mammoth revenue as they gushed in. We note how the party has been promoting a bizarre corruption complex, which has seen Nigeria broke just two months after price of oil started a free fall.

“We note that the APC has been raising the alarm for a long time now of how the PDP government wrecked the Nigerian economy through the promotion of massive graft and corruption, especially during the Jonathan era. We note that we have raised the alarm of how the economy was made so accessible and pliable to the partisan whims and caprices of PDP members and supporters and how different corrupt practices were built into what passes off as Nigerian economy, to make it vulnerable and susceptible to collapse.

“We had raised the alarm on how the PDP government of Goodluck Jonathan had abused relevant agencies for partisan interests and approved mind-boggling acts of corruption in critical sectors for the purpose of enhancing the nebulous interests of the PDP.”

Source: dailyindependent