Niyi akinsijuA group, Buhari Media Organization (BMO) has described the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar as illiterate against the background of his reaction to the 2019 budget proposal which President Muhammadu Buhari recently presented to the joint session of the National Assembly.
The former Vice President had given six reasons why the budget won’t work and concluded, in a personally signed statement, that Nigeria had not exited recession.
But group said in a statement by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, that Atiku’s position has proved that his knowledge of economic principles is questionable.
“How could a man described as one with economic know-how say a country whose Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stood at 1.81 % in the third quarter of 2018 compared to 1.17 % the previous year had not exited recession?
“Even his statement that indicated that there was a 1.5% growth in the second quarter of 2018 is a clear pointer to a sure and steady growth backed by a non-oil GDP growth of 2.01% in the same quarter as a result of the current administration’s faithful implementation of its Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).
“In addition we have had three budget cycles since 2015 that have spurred massive infrastructural growth with 1,531 kilometres of roads constructed and 1,008 kilometres rehabilitated across the country as well as massive railway construction, yet the PDP Presidential candidate wants Nigerians to believe that the 2019 budget proposal and the previous ones were bad.
“We make bold to say that contrary to Atiku’s position, the budget will build on the sure and steady progress the country has witnessed in so many facets of life and attain the 2019 projection of 3.01% growth.”
The Media Group said that all President Buhari has been doing since 2015 is to dig Nigeria out of the hole that PDP placed it for sixteen years.
“It would be recalled that the party presided over what would go down in history as one of the worst times in the country’s political history.
“After years of higher oil revenue, PDP ensured that over 100 million Nigerians were living on less than $1 a day in 2012 as confirmed by the World Bank.
“Nearly 61% of Nigerians were living in extreme poverty at that time while an audit report by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) showed that thecountry earned $62.9 billion (about N12.5 trillion) that same year.
“It was around this time that over 800 companies shut down and tens of thousands of Nigerians were pushed into the unemployment market, and that did not include Government-owned Enterprises (GOEs) that were privatised under the supervision of Atiku Abubakar as the then Vice President between 1999 and 2007.
Incidentally these companies folded up, in the same PDP years, after their assets were stripped by their new owners.
“President Buhari’s administration was now left with the task of paying off pensioners and giving interest-free loans to small business owners and farmers under the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) in order to take millions of people from the poverty threshold that Atiku’s party forced many Nigerians into.
BMO also expressed surprise at the manner an individual aspiring to govern Nigeria glibly dismissed the increase in the country’s foreign reserve under President Buhari’s watch.
“In the President budget speech, he revealed that the reserves were up from a low of $28.57 billion in May 2015 to $42.92 billion in December 2018 but Atiku,the ‘economic expert’ said it had nothing to do with the government’s economic policies, but the grace of God.
“How could he have said a $14.35billion increase in foreign reserves be simply by God’s grace? So how would he describe the failure by the previous government to add to the reserves in spite of higher oil sales for most part of its tenure?
“That tells you all Nigerians needs to know about Atiku’s economic knowledge-Questionable” BMO added.
It called on Nigerians to disregard the PDP Presidential candidate’s stance on the 2019 budget as part of the tissue of lies he has been dishing out in recent times to discredit President Buhari and his administration.
The group also condemned Alhaji Buba Galadima for calling for the disqualification of President Buhari as the presidential candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2019 general elections is a mere expression of frustration and crass ignorance.
Galadima, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential campaign spokesman, at a world press conference on Sunday in Abuja, had called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to disqualify President Buhari for receiving N1.22 billion from Nigerians farmers, which, according to him, contravenes the provision of the Electoral Act.
However, BMO said that Galadima is uninformed about the finer points of the Electoral Act which is why he is finding fault with N100 individual donation of members of an association.
“The association of farmers and fertilizer producers are not corporate entities and neither are they registered corporations, and certainly not captured in the Electoral Act. So for Galadima, a supposedly educated person and politician to ask for disqualification of president Buhari on the basis of their donation, is engagement in petty talks.
“Is Galadima rewriting the law on who and what to contribute to an electioneering campaign fund? He apparently forgets that President Buhari enjoys mass appeal and popularity among the Nigerian poor and downtrodden who he is feverishly elevating on to higher economic levels from the extreme poverty to which they were pushed into by the collective irresponsibility of the PDP governments of many years.“
It said that Buba Galadima got himself mixed up, by equating individual donation to corporate donation.
“We advise this gentleman to keep his anger under control so that such anger should not be allowed to contaminate the political space.”
The group also described the spokesperson’s allegation that security agencies were after the lawmakers who heckled president Buhari at the presentation of the 2019 budget proposal “as figment of his imagination and the product of a troubled mind.
“Obviously, PDP elements see defeat at the 2019 election staring them in face and they are jittery. The colossal failure of their presidential campaign flag- off in three geographical zones in the country, the groundswell of popular acclaim of President Muhammadu Buhari achievements all over the country have put the PDP under tremendous pressure and they have become desperadoes.”
