The Peoples Democratic Party has described Nigeria’s sliding into a second recession in five years under the rule of President Muhammadu Buhari as further evidence of his crass incompetence in governance.
According to the PDP, President Buhari and his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) should accept that they have failed and leave the stage for competent Nigerians to handle the economy.
The PDP position was contained in a statement titled, “Recession: You have Failed, Hands Off Economy, PDP Tells Buhari, APC…Reels Out Recovery Remedies,” signed by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in Abuja, on Sunday.
The statement read in part, “The Peoples Democratic Party asks President Muhammadu Buhari and his anti-people All Progressives Congress, to accept their failure and allow competent, transparent and honest hands to effectively manage our economy, as that is the only way to save our nation from an imminent economic collapse.
“The PDP asserts that the report by the National Bureau of Statistics that our economy has plunged into another recession under the APC confirms our stand that the Buhari Presidency and the APC lack the competence and integrity to run a national economy.
“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 the PDP.“
The opposition party further said, “President Buhari will be the first President, in our history, to score a hat-trick, in plunging his nation into economic recession, both as military and civilian leader.
“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.“
Ologbondiyan said while the Buhari Presidency “pretends” to be running a free market economy, it is in reality, running a corrupt exclusionist market economy tailored to serve the interest of a selfish few while frustrating millions of hard-working Nigerians with restrictive policies, lack of access to incentives and support as well as high taxes and levies.
This, he said, 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
