A former Vice President and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in the 2023 presidential elections, Atiku Abubakar, has again faulted the economic policies of President Bola Tinubu, saying they are adding hardship to Nigerians.
This is contained in a statement the former Vice President signed himself.
He condemned the 2024 budget as another “business-as-usual exercise, bereft of concrete ideas and actions that would support Nigeria’s journey toward economic transformation.”
Atiku, who contested Tinubu’s electoral victory in the tribunal up to the Supreme Court, maintained that every initiative that has emanated from the administration remains literally uninformed, arbitrary, and chaotic.
Atiku’s statement is presented in full:
STATEMENT BY H.E ATIKU ABUBAKAR ON CURRENT ECONOMIC CHALLENGES
The performance of the economy has, in recent weeks and months, been a subject of intense discourse among Nigerian citizens at home and abroad. Nigerians are gravely concerned, and rightly so, that Tinubu’s poor response to Nigeria’s economic challenges is setting the stage for a prolonged and deeper domestic economic crisis.
His economic policies, drawn from a so-called renewed hope agenda, are ironically dashing hopes, creating pain, and causing despair. The private sector is shrinking by the day as small businesses are emasculated, and as Multi-National Companies, confused and weary of the economy, leave Nigeria in droves. The intense cost of living pressures has created more misery for the poor in towns and villages. There is HUNGER IN THE LAND as basic commodities, including BREAD, are becoming out of reach of the average Nigerians.
His 2024 budget is a business-as-usual exercise, bereft of concrete ideas and actions that would support Nigeria’s journey toward economic transformation. Consisting largely of wasteful expenditures to cater to a bloated Federal Government, Budget 2024 will not facilitate growth and is incapable of empowering our citizens to earn a living and live a decent life.
BAT has shown no capacity to deal with the adverse and disastrous impact on the people and on businesses, of the new subsidy regime, and the new foreign exchange policy, which provides for a free-floating exchange rate. His initiatives are literally uninformed, arbitrary, and chaotic. BAT’s palliatives are too mean, pitiable, and contemptuous of the poor. He seems truly lost, bewildered, and overwhelmed.
To mask their failures, BAT and his political appointees are busy blaming his predecessor in office for bequeathing a ‘dead’ economy. This is an all too familiar game popularized by former President Buhari while in office. It reinforces what we already know: that BAT came into office unprepared.
Tinubu and his economic management team must swallow their pride, admit their missteps and failures, and follow those who know the terrain. They must act fast before the economy sinks deeper into the abyss.
The question is, will they? -AA
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