The FG advised the former ruling party to bury its head in shame by trying to distract the government from its rescue mission and returning the country to “Egypt”.
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a statement issued in Abuja on Thursday said if the PDP knew the meaning of shame, it would never utter any word following its ouster from power last year.
According to Mohammed, “We are on a rescue mission to resuscitate Nigeria after the PDP left it in a coma, and the noise from the same PDP seems designed to sabotage the rescue efforts. But we are not deterred,”
“While the PDP was emasculating Nigeria on all fronts, including social, economic and political, the rapacious party was deceiving Nigerians by giving them the illusion of growth and prosperity.
“Instead of showing remorse and rebuilding itself to a strong opposition party, the PDP has continued to blame the successor Buhari Administration which is left to pack their mess. PDP undertakers have continued to engage in a blame game, when they should be hiding from the shame they brought upon themselves and the nation,” he said.
The minister said the former ruling party led Nigeria to this present situation.
He said, “They keep saying we should stop talking of the past, yet the past will not stop rearing its head.
“They keep saying we should no longer refer to the past, but how can we forget so soon that our foreign exchange reserves plummeted from $62bn in 2008 to $30bn by 2015, at a time when oil prices were at a historic high, reaching a level of $114 per barrel in 2014.
“By comparison, Indonesia, another oil producing economy with a high population, increased its reserves from $60 billion in 2008 to $120 billion in 2015.
“The candid truth is that we failed under the successive PDP administrations to save for the rainy day, and we need to constantly remind ourselves of that so that we won’t repeat the mistake.
“Take the excess crude account which fell from about $9bn in 2007 to about $2bn in 2015. The argument that it was the State Governors that depleted the account does not hold water since there were Governors in place when the account was being built up.
“Worse still is the fact that up to $14bn in revenues from Nigerian LNG remains unaccounted for and indeed until the Buhari Administration came to office, State Governments never got any allocations from this source of funds which properly belongs to the Federation Account.
“The naked fact on the revenue front is that there was just a failure of leadership. This was compounded by the non-transparent uses of funds. We are all witnesses to the sacking of a Central Bank Governor because he raised an alarm about $20 billion that had gone missing.
“We are indeed still trying to recover huge sums looted from the national treasury under the PDP’s watch, with $15 billion stolen from the defence sector alone.
“Perhaps most painful is that because of the way funds (about $322m) returned from Switzerland were mishandled, we now have to accept conditionalities before our stolen assets are even returned to us,” he said.
Mohammed added that one of the achievements that the PDP has been touting is that it reduced the nation’s national debt.
“However, at the time that we were earning such large revenues from oil, we only managed to double our external debt from $5.6 billion to $10.7 billion between 2011 and 2015. The case of domestic debt was even worse, almost tripling from N888 billion to N2.1 trillion in the same period.
“Even these figures mask the extent of unpaid obligations to contractors and the huge plethora of uncompleted projects on which money continued to be spent without visible results.
“Payments to contractors stopped several years ago while not a single dollar was contributed to the Joint Venture activities. Over N4.5 trillion was spent on fuel subsidy in just two years under the PDP!
“Despite a recent oil boom, Nigerians are indeed all victims of the dilapidated and decrepit infrastructure.
“The economy that the Buhari Administration inherited was certainly in dire straits, if the huge amount of salary arrears that were being owed at various tiers of government is anything to go by. If, after earning so much resources and increasing the total debt stock, our governments were not able to meet salary obligations, sometimes for up to seven months, then something was definitely wrong somewhere and if this is not evidence of a collapsing economy, one wonders what it is.
“Indeed, it was not so long ago that the fuel subsidy regime almost bankrupted the country. Through credibility and commitment to good governance, the current administration has managed to save up to N1.4 trillion that would have been spent on subsidies for PMS. Moreover, the daily demand for PMS has halved from 1600 trucks a day to 850 trucks a day. If we could achieve such savings, then clearly the petrol sector which was and remains a huge source of foreign exchange demand was not being well managed.
“It is also important to point out that the poor security situation in the North East has had ripple effects on the economy. Apart from the dislocation of daily lives, there was extensive loss of agricultural production arising from the fact that our citizens in that zone could not go to their farms not to talk of planting and harvesting produce.
“Yet, in just a space of about 15 months, the Buhari Administration has liberated this region from the clutches of Boko Haram, which is now left to release meaningless videos when it could no longer carry out spectacular attacks,” he said. Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
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LAI MOHAMMED UR VERY STUPID MAN, LET BUHARI REVERSE THE ECONOMY HOW HE MET IT, USELESS OLD FOOLS WITH EMPTY BRAIN. GOD WILL ANSWER YOU PPLE. RUBBISH FOOLS.
ReplyDeleteU are the stupid person because u have a infinitestimal IQ.
Deleteif am stupid, for you to support this wicked APC God will pay u accordingly. amen pple are suffering, crying, hunger everywher.u are here supporting vision-less leaders. God will reward u.
Deletelai mohammed PLEASE RESIGN NOW, YOU OLD POLITRICK-tians, REVOLUTIONS IS SERIOUSLY LOOMING, YOUTHS CANNOT TAKE IT ANYMORE. RESIGN NOW TO SAVE THE IMPENDING INFERNO....RESIGN I BEG YOU VISIONLESS LEADERS.
ReplyDeleteGod bless you my brother. they are old fools
Deleteuseless fools called leaders, since day 1 in the office it has been blame blame game, you pple will play d blame game till 2019. turn back the economy to be where APC met it. fuel #97 with PDP, with APC #145, rice 8,000 with PDP now with APC 20k to 24k, with PDP $1 is 197 naira, with APC $1 is 425naira. salaries are not paid, workers losing their jobs.airlines are closing down. APC you pple are wicked like devil. God will answer you pple.
ReplyDeleteThese old fools are enjoying themselves with fat allowances, they only try to convince people that the damages of pdp is the effects of today. Still their own allowances are not stopped, so they care less on whatever is going on to the people.
ReplyDeleteThis shameless old liar will have one or two lies to tell even when he is inside the grave.Old fool!
ReplyDeleteThis shameless old liar will have one or two lies to tell even when he is inside the grave.Old fool!
ReplyDeleteEnter your comment...Lai Mohammed Shame On You, Blame Game All The Time.... Abia Francis.
ReplyDelete