The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP yesterday, urged President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress, APC, to accept responsibility for the state of the economy which last week slid back into recession.
PDP in a statement signed by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, said the report by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, that the economy has fallen into another recession under the APC confirmed its stand that the Buhari presidency and the APC lacked the competence and integrity to run a national economy.
The statement read: “The report shows that the Buhari administration and the APC have been lying to Nigerians with false performance claims when they know that they have, in a space of five years, wrecked and plundered our economy, which was rated as one of the fastest growing economies of the world, when they took over from PDP.
“The economic recession we face today is a fallout of President Buhari and APC’s restrictive, vindictive and anti-trade policies, bizarre foreign exchange controls and monetary policies that impede growth, an over-bloated public sector that encourages waste and incurable corruption, reckless treasury looting and failure to decisively deal with the escalated insecurity, which has destroyed economic activities in most parts of our country.
“While the Buhari Presidency pretends to be running a free market economy, it is in reality, running a corrupt exclusionist market economy tailored to service the interest of a selfish few while frustrating millions of hardworking Nigerians with restrictive policies, lack of access to incentives and support as well as high taxes and levies.
“This has crippled domestic production and competitiveness, eroded investors’ confidence and occasioned a dearth in foreign direct investment, leading to the economic contraction we have continued to witness under Buhari’s watch.
“Over 60 million hard working Nigerians have been rendered redundant by the harsh economic policies, including cumbersome protocols and high taxes foisted by the APC administration.
“The failure by the Buhari administration to heed to demands by Nigerians to rejig our security architecture has also worsened the level of insecurity in many parts of our country leading to the closure of millions of businesses, with over 30 million of our farmers abandoning their farmlands, while commercial activities on our trade corridors have been destroyed.
“Besides, our party had cautioned against the increase in fuel price, which has impacted negatively on the disposable incomes of Nigerians. We, however, insist that poor management and not the high cost of crude oil in the international market is responsible for high costs of domestic price of fuel.
“This is because, in its laziness, the Buhari administration failed to put structures in place to boost domestic competiveness for favourable market forces-induced pricing before the so called deregulation of the oil sector.
“Also, we note the negative impact of the closure of our borders by the Buhari administration, without encouraging local production, just to create an impression of food sufficiency, when it knows that it has not achieved any improvement in food production.
“If the Buhari Presidency had listened to wise counsel by well-meaning Nigerians, including our party to end its corruption, lift its restrictive polices, reduce taxes and state imposed prices, and get more competent hands to tackle insecurity, our nation would not be in this dire strait.
“Moreover, if the over N14 trillion oil money as well as the billions of naira stolen in the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, and other Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, by APC leaders are recovered and injected into our economy, our nation would not be in such bad shape.”
