The Lagos State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has lambasted the Federal Government under the watch of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) “for subjecting Nigeria to economic ruins in 16 years of relentless oil boom.” It said that the present austerity measures reeled out by the Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala just two months after the reversal of a 16 years oil windfall show that the PDP is devastating and cannot be trusted with the fate of any country seeking development and progress.

In a release in Lagos, signed by the Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the APC, Joe Igbokwe, the party said that it is lamentable that the PDP Federal Government in 16 years laid no solid foundation and built no worthwhile project that could help Nigeria survive the present economic crisis occasioned by a drop in oil price. This, according to APC, “speaks so much of a party that is daydreaming of taking over a working and viable state like Lagos with the sole aim of rendering it the same wrecked enclave it had made Nigeria today.”

Igbokwe said: “We note that while oil price skyrocketed in the last 16 years of the 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 in 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 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 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 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 alarm that the PDP was raiding the excess crude account and other savings that would have helped us withstand the present economic shock. We had raised alarm as the PDP Federal Government and its cahoots indulged in stealing of cash to the extent that tens of billions of dollars were stolen from the nation’s savings and nothing had been done about it. We had raised 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 economic sectors for the purpose of enhancing the nebulous interests of the PDP.

“Above all these, we had been consistent in warning of the profligacy of the PDP-led Federal Government and how it ensures that nothing is left in the treasury for the purpose of attending to the dwindling sectors of the economy. We called attention to the fact that this government despite reaping more revenue than five of its predecessor regimes combined has left our country poorer, more wretched, more insecure and more vulnerable. We note that the response of the government and PDP had been a nauseous name-calling and a boast that they are presiding over an economy that was not only growing in leaps and bounds but also viable to stand down any economic pressure. We note that the government has always cooked up phantom economic reports and fraudulent statistics that belie the dangers that are present with us today.

“Lagos APC notes that even as it lived in denial, the PDP Federal Government went on to seize and cut allocations to states and local government while still retaining all the facets of corruption that have accounted for the present sorry state the government is just admitting we are today. We note that the so-called austerity measures the PDP government has rolled out said nothing about the gargantuan fronts of corruption the government has been nurturing since it came to power. It says nothing about the stashing of a huge swathe of our national wealth for impending electoral battles of the PDP. It says nothing about cutting the bloated size of government it is running. It says nothing about illicit patronage of PDP and its officials and supporters which remains a great drainpipe that has swallowed most of our national wealth in the past sixteen years. The austerity measures says nothing about the dubious contracts and jobs with which the PDP grows corruption and we wonder how our economy can survive without vitiating these sources of leakage.

“Above all, even as we know that majority of Nigerians make nothing out of the so-called austerity measures since millions of Nigerians have perpetually been subjected to endless austerity for most of their lives, we feel Nigerians will ask the PDP-led Federal Government to tell Nigerians what it did with a 16 years oil windfall. We urge Nigerians to ask the PDP Federal Government the industries, the power plants, the refineries, the functional hospitals, schools, railways, airports, roads; it built with 16 years oil windfall. We urge Nigerians to demand from the PDP the jobs it created with the 16 years oil windfall instead of taxing Nigerians to indulge in austerity measures when it had wasted our past, our present and our future.

“Lagos APC believes that what is happening now warns the good people of Lagos against the PDP and its set of desperate day dreamers who have been romanticising of taking over Lagos. Their awful report card with power in Nigeria is enough warning to what the PDP will do with a Lagos that is now the staying power of a collapsing Nigeria if ever (God forbid) they are trusted with power in Lagos. That the PDP employed a 16 years’ providential oil wealth to demolish Nigeria to what it is today, should warn Lagosians that the PDP is a corrosive cabal that should not be touched with a ten feet pole. The scary image of a country that reaped bountiful oil windfall for a whole sixteen years and has nothing to fall back on just two months after reversal of fortune shows that the PDP is a monumental failure that must be shown the way out in 2015 for Nigeria to start the process of recovery.”

•Photo shows Lagos APC Spokesman Joe Igbokwe.

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