5th Anniversary: PDP, BMO disagree on President’s performance

…Buhari, APC have set Nigeria 60 years backward, says Opposition party

…No, President has clean up your 16 years administrative mess – Buhari group

Tunde Opalana, Abuja

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO), on Friday, disagreed on the performance of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) Federal Government as it clocked five years.

While the PDP, in its review, surmised that President Buhari and his party in five years have taken Nigeria 60 years backward, the BMO dismissed the accusation, saying the President has rather cleaned up the opposition party’s 16 years administrative mess.

The opposition party in its assessments of Buhari’s government, said the last five years of the APC administration is wasteful and could at the best be described as the season of the locusts.

The PDP lamented that the government has turned the nation into a wasteland, devastated her economy, shattered national dreams, crushed the hope of citizens and set the country backward.

The party’s position was made known at a press conference in Abuja on Friday by its national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan.

The opposition party described as saddening that May 29, under President Buhari, has become synonymous with “the enthronement of incompetence, insensitive leadership, endemic corruption in high places and governance by propaganda and false performance claims”.

The PDP insisted that the APC administration has reversed all the gains achieved by the PDP for which May 29 was always celebrated and left the country dejected and despondent.

Ologbondiyan said: “Under President Buhari, May 29 has become a day of grieving for Nigerians; a day for commemoration of failed promises, reversal of gains achieved by past leaders and retrogression in our body polity as a nation.

“This administration has failed woefully in its three major governance planks of provision of security, economic recovery and fight against corruption.

“In the last five years, the APC administration has done nothing but driving our nation along the precipices; reneged on all its campaign promises, ruined our productive sector, frustrated our farmers, manufacturers and small scale entrepreneurs, devalued our naira, wrecked employment opportunities for our youth, turned our once prosperous nation into the poverty capital of the world while accumulating huge foreign debts for this generation and the unborn.

Sanwo-Olu dedicates first anniversary to frontline health workers

“Under five years, President Buhari has borrowed from every corner of the world. These include external borrowing of $10.72 billion (N4.1 trillion) in 2015, $11.41 billion (N4.4 trillion) in 2016, $18.91 billion (N7.3 trillion) in 2017, $25.27 billion (N9.8 trillion) in 2018, $27.68 billion (N10.7 trillion) in 2019 as well as 2020 loans of $3.4 billion (N1.3 trillion) from IMF, $4.4 million (N1.594 billion) internal borrowing, $22.7 billion (N8.8 trillion) external loan and the recently yet to be approved $5.513 billion (N2.1 trillion) waiting before the National Assembly.

“Our party had already alerted Nigerians that with the volume of borrowing, President Buhari and the APC have placed our nation on the international auction market.

“In the last five years, corruption has also worsened in government circle as shown in Transparency International (TI)’s corruption perception index. Federal Government agencies such as the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) among others have been opened up for pillaging by the cabal in the Presidency and the APC.

“Under the APC administration, insurgents, marauders and bandits, who have been pushed to the fringes under the PDP, have resurged and now having field day ravaging communities and killing our compatriots while government continue in its lip service and empty condolence messages.

“It is distressing that instead of heeding wise counsel to accept failure and avoid making false performance claims, the Buhari Presidency just yesterday, released a list of recycled fictitious achievements, including very insensitive claim of having routed out bandits; even as marauders were pillaging communities and killing our compatriots in Sokoto and other states, particularly in the Northwest.

“A look at the list exposed reused figures and data without corresponding verifiable projects in any part of the country, apart from attempts to appropriate PDP projects”.

The party once again asked President Buhari to wake up to the reality, accept failure and seek help since it has become clear that his administration as presently constituted has devastated the nation and leading us on a journey to nowhere.

In the same vein, the party expressed worries over the worsening insecurity in various parts of the country and called on President Buhari to wake up, end the propaganda in his administration and take immediate decisive action to secure the nation.

The PDP condemned the bloody attack by bandits who reportedly had field day ravaging communities including Garki, Dan Aduwa, Kuzari, Kutuma, all in Sabon Birni Local Government of Sokoto State on Wednesday night in an onslaught in which no fewer than 74 compatriots were killed.

It said that it s more distressing that bandits had reportedly taken control of some parts of the state and now hold courts and even grant permission and consent to residents before they can conduct weddings, naming ceremonies or operate their markets.

The PDP also decried similar deadly attacks by bandits in Katsina, Southern Kaduna, Niger, Zamfara, Kogi and other states leading to the killing of many Nigerians despite assurances by the Federal Government.

“It is saddening that despite these manifest security lapses, killings and acts of insurgency in the country, President Buhari has failed to heed to demands by Nigerians asking him to rejig the nation’s security architecture and inject new blood into the system.

“Our party holds that the time has come for Mr. President to take a decisive action to address this ugly situation”, the party said.

The PDP condoled with Governor Aminu Tambuwal and the people of Kogi, Kaduna, Niger, Zamfara states as well as all victims of such attacks in various parts of the country.

Reacting to the PDP assessment of Buhari’s administration, a media arm of the Buhari support organisation, the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) lampooned the PDP for reducing the role of opposition to frontal cofrontation and assault rather than that of constructive criticism.

Chairman of BMO, Niyi Akinsiju in an exclusive chat with the Daily Times via telephone, on Friday, said he was not at all surprised by PDP outburst stressing that “this is what you get when an opposition party that is ill-motivated and is reduced to plebian roadside analysis, takes to rumour mongering and unscrupulous inclination to make up and circulate fake news”.

Instead of exposing its past ineptitude in governance, he said, the PDP should have covered itself in shame after being rejected by Nigerians at the polls repeatedly in 2015 and 2019.

“Matter of fact is that Nigerians voted President Muhammad Buhari in 2015 to come clean up the putrid mess the PDP generated in their 16 years of wantonness and utter irresponsible leadership.

“In 2019, Nigerians renewed the president’s mandate to continue on the mission of redeeming the country from the savage visitation of the former ruling party when they conclusively rejected the PDP at the presidential poll. We are not surprised that the PDP has become so adept at spinning lies to create a sub reality”, he said.

He reminded the PDP of its past misdeed, saying “whatever the case may be, we will continue to remind them that despite so much resources at their disposal, Nigeria went into the record as having a population of 112 million people living under one dollar a day in 2012.

“It is also on record that after witnessing an oil economy driven by high global prices so much that the economy recorded a 6.4% GDP growth in 2014, PDP had no structure or ideas to sustain growth that just two quarters afterward, in the second quarter of 2015, the economy had crashed to a GDP measurement of 2.4%, a clear exhibition of the black market economy of the PDP era.

“We keep insisting that the difference between the PDP and APC is like comparing death with being alive. We will not waste our time responding to those invalid, conjured figures and reckless allegations of the PDP, they belong in the imaginative membrane of fiction writers.

“What is important is that Nigerians can point to material and physical projects and policies that continue to impact the people,”the BMO chairman added.