THE Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) has accused President Muhammadu Buhari’s government of elevating corruption as a new normal.
In a statement by the party’s National Publicity Secretary Kola Ologbondiyan on Tuesday, the PDP alleged that officials were pillaging ministries, department and agencies, looting over N15 trillion while mortgaging the future of the nation with reckless foreign borrowing.
But the PDP failed to name the officials and present evidence on how the alleged officials squirrelled the fund.
The party made the allegation in reaction to Senate President Ahmed Lawan’s claim that the feud between the Eighth National Assembly did not allow Buhari to deliver his electoral promises to Nigerians.
Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara, both APC members before defecting to the PDP in the build-up to the 2019 elections, led the two chambers of the National Assembly: the Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, between 2015 and 2019.
Lawan had said on Monday at a programme to close the First Progressives Youth Conference 2021 in Abuja that some party members elected into the National Assembly constituted barriers to the Buhari government’s agenda.
He said the feud resulted in the party losing its first four years in power.
“When we were voted in 2019 as leaders of the National Assembly, we were conscious of one thing, that our mandate that was given to us by Nigerians in 2015 had suffered disruption and dislocation,” Lawan had said.
“For four years, our government could not perform optimally because of the then crisis between the parliament – the National Assembly – and the Executive arm of government.
“So, APC had already lost four very important years. And, that was supposed to be the years that we should have convinced Nigerians that they took the right decision by voting out a PDP administration in 2015.”
The PDP described Lawan’s claim as a “despicable juvenile excuse for incompetence and corruption that weighed down the Buhari administration.”
It accused the ruling party of wrecking the country’s economy and turning the nation into a beggar and poverty capital of the world.
It also said the APC had excelled in superintending over the escalation of violence and acts of terrorism, which it said had turned the nation into a killing field.
The PDP urged the APC leaders to admit that their party and Buhari presidency were ‘a bunch of failures’ that had brought so many challenges to the country.
“APC leaders should be bold to tell President Buhari and the APC that posterity will not be kind to them for their manifest misrule, which has brought so much devastation to our nation.
“By 2023, history would have listed the Buhari Presidency and the APC as a calamitous era as well as that wind that blew no good in the life of our nation.
“Of course, the APC leaders have admitted that the party is already heading to the dustbin of ignominy as it cannot survive after the Buhari tenure,” the PDP started.
The party, therefore, urged people in the county to support it to take over power from the APC in the 2023 elections.
Marcus bears the light, and he beams it everywhere. He's a good governance and decent society advocate. He's The ICIR Reporter of the Year 2022 and has been the organisation's News Editor since September 2023. Contact him via email @ mfatunmole@icirnigeria.org