Tinubu’s New Year address a harvest of deceit, empty claims, admission of failure – PDP

*Demands account of nation’s earnings

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on Monday January 1, 2024, dismissed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s New Year address, describing it as “an admission of failure, harvest of deceit, false claims and empty promises”.

The PDP also described the speech as unpresidential, uninspiring and amounts to a waste of valuable time, stressing that it did not address any of the critical issues plaguing the nation.

The Party further said that Nigerians were dismayed as President Tinubu employed rhetoric and failed to address the critical issues of insecurity, decayed infrastructure, comatose manufacturing and productive sectors; crushing 28 percent inflation rate, continuing plunge of the Naira, alarming unemployment, excruciating poverty and economic hardship occasioned by the reckless, ill-advised and insensitive policies and programmes of his administration.

The PDP in a statement by Hon Debo Ologunagba, National Publicity Secretary, noted that President Tinubu failed to address the vexatious issue of incompetence, insensitivity, massive profligacy, unbridled treasury-looting inherent in his administration, which have put our nation in dire strait.

It said that more distressing was that President Tinubu had no words in his New Year address for the Christmas eve genocidal massacre of over 200 Nigerians by terrorists in Plateau State and the murder of over 5000 citizens in Plateau and other States of the federation under his watch since May 29, 2023.

In the words of the PDP: “What manner of a President! It is an unpardonable assault on the sensibility of Nigerians for President Tinubu to brazenly assert that “everything I have done in office, every decision I have taken and every trip I have undertaken outside the shores of our land, since I assumed office on 29 May 2023, have been done in the best interest of our country.”

“On the contrary, all decisions and actions of the Tinubu Presidency including the approval of increase in the pump price of fuel from N167 to over N700 per liter, devaluation of the naira with the consequential high costs and hardship; skewing of the 2024 budget in favour of luxury appetite of the Presidency and APC leaders without concrete policies to revive the economy and create jobs; the wasteful foreign trips with political cronies and failure to address the mindless killings across the nation cannot be said to be in the interest of our country.

“Furthermore, the undermining of the Constitution and Institutions of Democracy including attempts to emasculate the National Assembly and compromising of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) through the appointment of APC card-carrying members as Resident Electoral Commissioners cannot be in the interest of the nation.

“President Tinubu’s claims that his anti-people actions and policies, with their calamitous consequences are in the interest of the nation further confirms that this administration is deliberately subjecting Nigerians to hardship as a way to suppress them to surrender to totalitarianism.

“Also, in stating that “from the boardrooms at Broad Street in Lagos to the main-streets of Kano and Nembe Creeks in Bayelsa, I hear the groans of Nigerians who work hard every day to provide for themselves and their families”, President Tinubu has admitted that his administration has plunged Nigerians into pain, anguish and misery.

“President Tinubu ought to have used the opportunity presented by the New Year to apologize to Nigerians and marshal out steps to address our national challenges, including those responsible for the exiting of multinational manufacturing companies and other businesses from our country.

“What Nigerians demand of President Tinubu is to provide a comprehensive account of our nation’s earnings including the proceeds from the removal of subsidy on petroleum products, especially in the face of allegations that the earnings are being diverted to private pockets of APC leaders and their cronies,” the opposition Party said.

The PDP therefore tasked the National Assembly to step up and perform its Constitutional role of oversight to hold the Executive Arm accountable as the custodian of the purse of the nation.