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| Lai Mohammed and Olisa Metuh |
The Minister of Information and
Culture, Alh. Lai Mohammed has taken a swipe on the Peoples’ Democratic Party
(PDP) over its criticism of the All Progressive Party’s (APC) led government
for the poor state of the country’s economy and depreciation of naira, saying
that the PDP lacks the temerity to insult President Buhari and the citizens for
their failure in managing the economy in a transparent manner.
The Minister was reacting to the
comments credited to Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, that businesses
may collapse in the next six months because the Buhari Administration has
mismanaged the economy, which he said was the clearest indication yet that the
PDP and its leaders are still in denial about the massive body blows they
inflicted on the Nigerian economy.
Mohammed, who spoke in a
statement signed by his Special Assistant on media, Mr. Segun Adeyemi, insisted
that the poor state of the country’s economy, especially the depreciation in
the Naira exchange rate, is the direct consequence of the incomprehensible
mismanagement of the economy and the mindless looting of the national treasury
under the immediate past Administration, rather than pushing the blame on the
Buhari’s Administration.
”If there was still any honour
left among thieves, there is no way the leaders of a party under whose watch
the nation’s economy suffered a monumental mismanagement and the Central
Bank was turned to the ATM or
piggy bank of a few people will have the temerity to insult a government that
is working hard to turn things around or the citizens who are bearing the brunt
of such mismanagement,” the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai
Mohammed, said in a statement on Sunday.
”It is now clear to all Nigerians
that if the PDP had won the last general elections, Nigeria’s economy would not
have survived one more month, considering the battering it received under
the immediate past
Administration. It is therefore unconscionable that those who should show
contrition and hunker down to avoid public opprobrium are the same ones
pointing an accusing finger at the Buhari Administration,” he said.
”Senator Ekweremadu complained
about the depreciation of the Naira without telling Nigerians who ‘dollarized’
the Nigerian economy by bribing many individuals and groups with dollars during
the last elections, thus inflicting a knock-out punch on the local currency. He
also failed to tell Nigerians which government presided over the frenzied
mop-up of dollars, either for ‘armsgate’ or for slush fund purposes, from the
CBN to a point where it almost ran out of the hard currency,” he added.
The Minister said even though the
Buhari Administration met an economy that was in coma, it had refused to use
that as an excuse for inaction, hence has been working hard on measures that
will turn the economy around and
greatly offer relief to Nigerians by lifting millions, not thousands, of people
out of poverty through a massive social intervention policy.
”The outcome of the months of
hard work will manifest soon in the 2016 national budget that will give succour
to millions of Nigerians who are reeling from fallout of the solecism of the
immediate past Administration
that turned the country into a cash bazaar,” said Minister
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