Don’t Issue Any New Year Message To Nigerians, PDP Tells APC

Don’t Issue Any New Year Message To Nigerians, PDP Tells APC

The Peoples Democratic Party has stepped up the war of words with the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government, saying it should not issue any New Year message to Nigerians since they had not ‘fulfilled’ any of the promises contained in their previous messages since assumption of office.

According to the former ruling party, Nigerians were reeling from the alleged litany of woes visited on them in the last two years by the APC government hence it would be the height of callousness for the party and its government to “spew another round of propaganda and false hope in the name of New Year messages” Punch writes.

In a statement in Abuja Friday, the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, queried “What else would they tell Nigerians apart from inventing new lies and propaganda as they have always done, particularly at the turn of each New Year.

“Every New Year, since 2016, the APC and its Federal Government have been reeling out heaps of promises which they had no intentions to fulfil. Now, they are warming up to reel out fresh ones in January 2018.

“What is the need of a New Year message from the APC government when it would be replete with propaganda? What is the need of their yearly assurances when the only thing we see is an arrogant and incompetent government plunging the nation into economic recession and visiting the citizens with the worst form of untold hardship?

“What seriousness should any Nigerian attach to a government that takes governance for granted, puts off its Federal Executive Council meeting at the slightest whim and blame imaginary invasion of its offices by rats for the inability to meet required statutory functions?

“What else should Nigerians expect from a government that promised massive employment, only to render 7.74 million Nigerians jobless between 2016 and September 2017, with the combined unemployment and underemployment rate hitting 40.0 per cent as declared by the National Bureau of Statistics.”

Ologbondiyan further flayed the APC on its promise to deliver naira exchange at N1 to $1 and their claim to reduce the price of fuel, only for it to increase it from where the PDP left it at N86.50 to N300-N400 per litre.

“What do we expect from a government that devastated the economy in 2017 so much that Nigerians were forced to turn to Ponzi schemes like the Mavrodi Mundial Movement for survival, only for an estimated three million to lose about N18bn in the process.

“The APC misrule literarily turned 2017 into a harvest of woes: hunger, disease, violence and deaths, while the nation is now being pummelled by ethnic and religious agitations and attendant violence in all parts of the country.

“Also this year, marauders, criminal herders, Badoo cultists and insurgents were on the prowl with several innocent Nigerians as victims.”

He concluded that the Federal Government had fallen below the expectations of Nigerians when measured against all key performance indicators.