By Dirisu Yakubu, Abuja
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, yesterday cautioned the national caretaker chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and Yobe state governor, Mai Mala Buni, to stop “sending impostors and charlatans” in his party to insult governors elected on its platform and other patriotic leaders just to divert attention from the failures and problems of his party.
The PDP counselled Governor Buni to design a more constructive way of containing the manifest failures of APC government at the federal and state levels “instead of this jealous act of seeking to use nonentities to attempt to drag down PDP performing governors and other well-meaning Nigerians.”
In a statement signed by its spokesman, Kola Ologbindiyan, the PDP said it was “indisputable that governors elected on the platform of the PDP have performed and are performing better, by all standards, than their counterparts in the APC.”
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The statement read: “Nigerians across the country already know that the standard of living, infrastructural development, wealth creation, employment opportunities as well as growth in critical sectors including aviation, education, health, transportation power, energy, manufacturing, commerce are better in PDP states.
“Of course, no APC governor can point to any development project that can compete with the achievements of any of our governors in any sector of life.
“Such feat is not by accident but by sheer ingenuity, hard work and accountability being exhibited by our governors in line with the manifesto of the PDP.
“Furthermore, it is ludicrous that rather than advising President Muhammadu Buhari and his government to rescind the unjustified increase in fuel price and withdraw the morbid declaration that fuel price ought not to be cheaper in Nigeria than Saudi Arabia, the APC is further insulting Nigerians by bandying unsubstantiated oil subsidy figures, to defend their atrocious policy.
“In case the APC is not aware, it is instructive to remind them that their party and government has fallen too low in the esteem of Nigerians for it to seek a rebranding through impostors as spokespersons, to funnel lies, deception and distortions of facts in a fresh attempt to beguile Nigerians.
“It is incontrovertible that contrary to the lies of APC impostors, between 2006 and 2013, successive PDP administrations, effectively managed the resources of our nation and grew our economy to become one of the fastest-growing in the world as recorded by Fitch and the International Monetary Fund, IMF.
“Perhaps the APC should be reminded that within this period, the PDP achieved the historical debt relief (of about $18 billion), which freed Nigeria from the suffocating shackles of huge external borrowings of the past.
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“It is a fact that during this period, the PDP administrations reduced our nation’s budget deficits by 72 per cent stabilized our currency and overall economy to achieve the doubling of our GDP within four years from $55.65bn in 2003 to $114.36bn in 2006, as acknowledged by IMF database.
“This is in addition to improving our FDI from less than $700 million per annum in 1999 to $4.3 billion by 2007, which earned Nigeria a BB credit rating by Fitch.”
The party also made a comparison of life under a PDP-led government, saying “it is incontrovertible that life was better in our country under the PDP and that the purchasing power of Nigerians, in general, experienced its highest in our contemporary history under the PDP.
“Our party, therefore, counsels the APC to rather advise President Buhari to wake up to the demands of governance by ending the corruption in his oil revenue management, reduce the costs of fuel price and rejig his security and economic teams, instead of this resort to diversionary tactics.”
