Unemployment: APC is stretching limits of Nigerians – PDP
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has lambasted the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for overstretching the limits of Nigerians by trivializing and politicizing the frightening unemployment level under its watch.
In a statement on Sunday by its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, the party warned the APC to prepare to face the consequences ahead of its fizzling before 2023.
Knocking the party for attempting to distort and muffle facts on unemployment which are already in the public domain, the PDP stressed that the All Progressives Congress has confirmed that it remains an ‘Automated Lying Machine’, which has never been interested in the welfare of Nigerians.
It also noted that with its latest deportment, the APC has completed the trappings of a dying party and leaves no one in doubt that it has always been a power-grabbing special purpose vehicle, which has now come to the end of its journey.
“It is shameful that in its attempt to deny that the number of unemployed persons and job losses across the formal and informal sectors had surge under its administration, the APC forgot that the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige, had earlier disclosed that unemployment rate was at a frightening 23.1 percent while raising alarm that the rate will hit a devastating 33.5 percent in the new year, 2020.
“The APC also forgot that the minister, Ngige, while declaring open a two-day workshop on high unemployment rate earlier in the year, reportedly described the situation as scary and further alerted that apart from the swelling unemployment rate, underemployment had also surged to 16.6 percent.
“The APC, also chose not to remember that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in an earlier report, stated that 16 million Nigerians (which has now risen to 18 million) were unemployed, 18 million more were underemployed while another 27.44 million, reportedly refused to work in 2016 for various reasons not unrelated to frustration in the polity under the APC administration.
“It is completely unpardonable that rather than accepting the truth and seeking for solution to the looming unemployment Armageddon, the APC seeks to trivialize and politicize a serious national problem.
“Such crass irresponsibility was never exhibited and could never have been allowed under a PDP-controlled Federal Government”, the party said.
The PDP further stated that it is indeed shameful that at the time well-meaning Nigerians are worried about the situation and seeking for solutions, the APC and its government are bent on justifying their looting of national resources as well as rationalizing their under-the-table system of selective employment of a few, which favours only their cronies at the expense of majority of Nigerian youth.
The party claimed that “today, under the APC, Ministries, Departments and Agencies’ employment letters are sold far beyond the reach of the children of regular Nigerians while the APC government gloats.
“Instead of solutions, the APC in its vindictiveness, relishes in harassing and victimizing hard working Nigerian entrepreneurs, who are excelling in productive sectors including aviation, telecommunication, banking, manufacturing, construction, retail, real estate, power, oil and gas, hospitality among others, established under the robust economic policies of the past PDP administrations.
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“Rather than seeking for a scapegoat where there is none, the APC should confess its sins and make haste to return the over N14 trillion stolen under its watch including the stolen N9 trillion exposed in the leaked NNPC memo. This is in addition to the mindless looting in agencies including NHIS, NEMA and FIRS”.
It asked the ruling APC to take responsibility for the mortgaging of the nation with the $83 billion debt accumulated by its administration while advising the party to know that Nigerians have since moved ahead and can no longer be swayed by its empty propaganda, blame-game and lies.
