The candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the last presidential election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, said the 26.72 per cent inflation rate underscores the incompetence and cluelessness of the Bola Tinubu administration.
Atiku in a statement by his Special Assistant on Public Communication Phrank Shaibu blamed the rising inflation figure on the removal of fuel subsidies, shoddy exchange rate unification policy, and uninformed introduction of value-added tax (VAT) on diesel.
The former vice president said Tinubu’s declaration of a state of emergency on food security was nothing but mere rhetoric, noting that food prices had continued to rise due to a hike in the cost of transportation and dilapidated federal roads that had made interstate travel unbearable.
Atiku observed that while food prices in several parts of the world are dropping, “they are increasing in Nigeria because the country is being governed by an economic Lilliputian whose only bragging right is increasing the revenue of Lagos State through multiple taxation and the institutionalisation of extortion.”
He argued that the administration knows nothing about exchange rates, monetary policy, or how to run a multi-ethnic and largely agrarian country like Nigeria.
“This was a man who said last year that the only way to solve unemployment was to employ 50 million youths into the army and feed them with ‘Agbado (corn), cassava and ewa (beans)’. How can such a man have the answers to Nigeria’s problems?” he asked.
Atiku described Tinubu’s administration as prodigal, noting that at a time he was calling for belt-tightening, he inaugurated the largest cabinet in Nigeria’s history and is set to plunge Nigeria deeper into more debt.
“He declared an emergency in food security, ordered the release of grains, and reviewed his earlier palliative plan, but 100 days since the so-called declaration of a state of emergency, Nigerians are hungrier and poorer.
“It is obvious that it was all a ruse to deceive the feeble-minded, just like his announcement on the lifting of the UAE visa ban,” the PDP candidate said.
He called on Nigerians to tarry a bit longer while the Supreme Court tried to rectify the electoral disaster of February 25 and expressed worry that should the Tinubu administration last a year, Nigerians would be poorer than ever.