…accuses President of failure to implement 20% of budget in 3yrs
The Labour Party has said that the long ‘cold war’ between the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress should be blamed for the inability of the government to perform as expected by Nigerians.
The LP said with the disagreement between Buhari and Tinubu, allegedly caused by some hawks in the President’s administration, the government and the country suffered serious inertia, resulting in the worsening of the economic recession in which the nation found itself.
The change they brought to us is suffering, poverty and penury
The National Chairman, LP, Alhaji Abdulkareem Abdulsalam, said this in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.
Abdulsalam said although Buhari and Tinubu seemed to have mended fences, the country had yet to recover from the negative effects of the long ‘face-off’ between the two leaders.
He, therefore, argued that the Buhari administration could not be rated high by anyone because within the period it was busy fighting the ‘cold war’ with Tinubu, the nation’s economy plummeted, resulting in the economic recession it’s now claiming the country had recently overcome.
The LP national chairman added that in spite of the rapprochement between the two APC top brass, the Buhari administration’s pattern of appointment of political office holders was still a clear indication that he had preference for the members of his defunct Congress for Progressive Change, while Tinubu, on his part, had continued to operate as the national leader of his former Action Congress of Nigeria.
Abdulsalam also accused the Buhari administration of presenting the budget in the past three years without implementing even 20 per cent of it.
He lamented that the Buhari-led administration had brought hardship on the country.
He said, “APC has failed woefully. Let me tell you how APC failed. Buhari belongs to CPC, Tinubu and his group belong to CAN; the man in Imo belongs to APGA. So, you will discover that five political parties are operating independently. The other four have already been subjected to no structure. Only CPC has been concentrated upon in appointments, in development and even in sectional appointments.
“So, you can see that Buhari is outside the management fences with Tinubu, the real leader of the APC. So, I cannot give any percentage, if I’m allowed to give APC percentage in Nigeria. They know they would not get more than five per cent, because when Buhari wanted to present his budget for this next year, there were protests by all the senators and House of Reps members; it took Bukola Saraki and Dogara to appease them. How can you bring budget every year in the past three years and you cannot implement 20 per cent of the budget?”
“They have failed this country; everybody in this country today is hungry. There is hunger on the streets, there is anger on the face of the people. So, APC has failed totally, completely. The change they brought to us is suffering, poverty and penury. So also are all the things they have brought to us,” he added.
Abdulsalam also disclosed that the LP had not anointed anyone as its presidential candidate for the 2019 presidential election.
He, however, declared the party’s support for the zoning of the governorship in Ogun State in 2019 to the Yewa/Awori.