Paul Ibe, the spokesman of former Nigerian vice president Atiku Abubakar on Thursday lambasted president Muhammadu Buhari and his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), saying “Focusing on Atiku won’t solve the problems Buhari, APC created for Nigeria.”
Ibe wrote: “The All Progressives Congress has validated the assumption that the major reason the condition of living has been deplorable under the Buhari administration is on account of the fact that the party focuses more on playing petty politics than in actual governance.
“It is preposterous that a political party which has spent the past five and half years launching humongous and unprecedented hardship on Nigerians finds no time to address and apologize to Nigerians for the false promises of change that they made to the Nigerian people, but waste a whole day self-adulating about politicians who have crossed to join the APC. That is a very irresponsible thing to do!
“Whereas neither the PDP nor Atiku has initiated discussions with anyone on a 2023 presidential run, it is the APC which has busied itself talking about zoning and focusing on rigging the next election.
“For the avoidance of any shred of doubt, Atiku, like many Nigerians who are pained by the downward spiral of condition of the country under the APC government, has preoccupied himself with proffering solution to the myriad of problems the APC has visited on the country and working hard to contribute his quota in strengthening the country’s economy.
“It is evident that the APC has failed woefully on all the major issues it campaigned against the PDP in 2015 from poverty to insecurity; joblessness and high cost of living; national unity to bad foreign image; human rights abuse to economic recessions – issues which if the APC was a serious political party, should be dispensing its energy in resolving.
“But rather than do that, the APC is prancing about feeling good that its stock of membership is upping, while the economic profile of the country and its people keeps ebbing.
“Perhaps we should remind the APC that focusing on Atiku will not improve the country’s Gross Domestic Product or take the country out of the current recession; it will not create jobs for the youth of Nigeria. Focusing on Atiku will not solve the problem of inflation and high cost of food items; and neither would it lift millions of Nigerians out of poverty. It will not address the pervasive state of insecurity in the country and will not unite a nation that has been sharply divided like never before.”
Simon Ateba is Chief White House Correspondent for Today News Africa. Simon covers President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, the U.S. government, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial and international institutions in Washington D.C. and New York City.