*PDP: Nothing To Celebrate Following Worsening Economic Crisis
*Presidency: Buhari Has Achieved Great Strides and Positive Changes
By Hamilton Nwosa( Head, The New Diplomat’s Business and data tracking desk)
The main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Presidency have again returned to the trenches. But this time, they are engaging themselves in war of words over president Muhammadu Buhari’s performance in the last five years.
While the PDP maintained that the Buhari administration has nothing to celebrate today because it has been a monumental failure, the presidency insists that the administration has recorded very impactful and positive changes in Nigeria.
The PDP in a statement issued by Kola Ologbondiyan,its national publicity secretary said the administration has been characterized by humongous corruption, worsening insecurity and economic hardship. He said: “Our party further advises President Buhari against living in denial of the ugly fact that his administration and his dysfunctional All Progressives Congress (APC) had deserted, betrayed and abandoned underprivileged Nigerians, particularly our youths, after the APC deceived them with false promises to grab power in 2015.”
Ologbondiyan further accused the Buhari administration of receding into the safety of the presidential villa while Nigerians suffer economic hardships. “”The president should know that he cannot use the COVID-19 pandemic as excuse for failure as his administration had since lost grip of the security and economic situation in our country even before the outbreak of the scourge.”
But Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Mr Femi Adesina while debunking allegations of non-performance against his boss, insisted that the Buhari administration has performed creditably well in the last five years in power.
Adesina, who reacted via a statement to celebrate the one year of the president’s second term in office, said the Buhari administration, has in accordance with his election promises in 2015 achieved great progress and change in the special areas of security, economic development and anti-corruption war.
“Between May 29, 2015, when it was inaugurated for the first term, and now, the Buhari administration has made salutary impact in almost all the facets of Nigerian life.
“The government swept into office on the wings of change and that change has been wrought in nearly all phases of national life. Where the lofty goals are yet to be attained, it is work in progress, and eyes are firmly fixed on the ball. No distraction.
“The three umbrella areas on which government based its interventionist agenda are: security, reviving the economy (with particular emphasis on job creation, especially for youths) and fighting corruption. In these three areas, where we are today cannot be compared with where we used to be, ” Adesina explained.
The presidential spokesman further noted that “by May 2015, insecurity had badly fractured the fabric of the nation. No one could wager that the country would survive the next month, not to talk of another year” but this has changed.
He said :“Bombs went off like firecrackers, insurgents ran riot round the country, other forms of crime and criminality held sway. Life was nasty, brutish and short.
“Over five years, the battle has been taken to insurgents and criminals. And they are being extinguished by the day, and very close to complete extirpation.
“The economy, long dependent on a mono product – petroleum, is being retooled, refocused, with diversification as a task that must be accomplished. Agriculture has been given a fillip, manufacturing has got a shot in the arm and solid minerals are contributing a large chunk to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The country is very close to food security, with rice, beans, maize, millet, and all sorts of grain no longer imported. We now eat what we grow.
“On the war against corruption, no quarter is asked and none is given. Commit the crime, do the term. No retreat, no surrender.”
However, the PDP again disagrees. Ologbondiyan sees things differently. According to him the PDP handed over to the current APC government a robust economy which was rated as one of the fastest growing in the world only for the Buhari administration to “ bring Nigeria to its knees as the world poverty capital and a debtor country within a space of five years.”
The PDP spokesman insisted that the Buhari administration should use the occasion of May 29th to reflect that under its watch, the Naira, the nation’s currency which was valued at N160 to a dollar during the administration of former president Goodluck Jonathan, fell to N500 and then subsequently to N390. Ologbondiyan also averred that the Buhari administration has similarly jerked up the Value Added Tax (VAT) from 5 percent to 7.5 percent with consequential increase in costs of essential items.
But Adesina would have none of those accusations. According to him, before Buhari came into power on May 29, 2015, the state of insecurity in Nigeria was uncontrollable but that the current government under the able leadership of president Buhari has been able to bring things under control.
“By May 2015, insecurity had badly fractured the fabric of the nation. No one could wager that the country would survive the next month, not to talk of another year” but this has changed.
“Bombs went off like firecrackers, insurgents ran riot round the country, other forms of crime and criminality held sway. Life was nasty, brutish and short.
“Over five years, the battle has been taken to insurgents and criminals. And they are being extinguished by the day, and very close to complete extirpation., ‘’he added.
