Presidential candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar has asked president Muhammadu Buhari to stop the donation of the sum of $500,000 to Guinea Bissau, saying that it is part of the waste of the nation’s scarce fund.
In a statement today, Sunday by the presidential campaign organization, Atiku described the financial assistance to another country as “financial profligacy that has seen the Buhari administration destroy a once thriving economy.
“In the latest instance, the Buhari government has announced that it is making a $500,000 donation to Guinea Bissau, along with other material donations.
“Our response is to ask why a nation that has been officially named as the world headquarters for extreme poverty, will donate her resources to others instead of using them to solve pressing domestic problems?
“This is the same government that is so cash strapped that it has so far borrowed ₦13 trillion in 3 years putting our economy in even greater peril. How prudent is it to go about taking loans from whomsoever cares to lend you money and then turn around to give out those same monies even when your own people are suffering the worst forms of poverty they have ever endured?”
The PDP flagbearer called on the Buhari administration to cut it’s coat according to its cloth, adding that the huge loans his government is collecting, “only to squander it, will be repaid by future generations and limit the nation’s ability to invest in projects that will Get Nigeria Working Again.
“There are over a million Internally Displaced Persons in Nigeria. If you cannot adequately support your own people in dire need, what is the wisdom in crossing borders to support others?
“We have the moral authority to question this administration’s profligacy and imprudence, because Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the PDP was part of an administration that paid off Nigeria’s entire foreign debt. We are therefore concerned to see this government piling on debt and then squandering it away without any consideration for the needs of her own people.”