Nigeria worst under Buhari, PDP governors restate

• Party condemns clampdown on Muslim cleric

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors’ Forum has insisted Nigerians fared worst under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari.

It said: “This is reflected in prices of basic foodstuffs, unemployment rate, electricity prices, kerosene, diesel, fuel, aviation fuel and air ticket prices, which have all gone through the roof.”

It said a similar negative trend applies to poverty, inflation, exchange rate, debt accumulation and corruption.

“The Buhari presidency, by all objective accounts, is the worst in Nigeria’s history of managing our diversity. Under the All Progressives Congress (APC) seven-year rule, Nigerians no longer trust one another. Ethnic and religious differences are not properly managed. All our fault lines are exposed and exacerbated,” the forum said.

A statement signed by its Director-General, C.I.D. Maduabum, noted: “All aspects of life in Nigeria are being systematically destroyed by the APC administration. Life has become short, brutish and valueless in Buhari’s Nigeria, as insecurity ravages the land.”

The forum lamented that the Presidency, in its statement by Senior Special Assistant to the President, Garba Shehu, could not appreciate the enormity of the problems because it is “totally oblivious of the suffering and agony Nigerians are facing.”

It said the most disturbing aspect of misrule in the petroleum sector. It alleged: “The stealing of Nigeria’s crude oil and connivance of Nigerian National Petroleum Company in shortchanging other tiers of government is simply mind-boggling, if not outright criminal.”

According to the governors, “Nigeria now produces 1.1million barrels of crude oil per day. It has the capacity to produce 2.5million per day. It cannot even meet its Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries quota of a 1.8million per day. NNPC is a law unto itself. Nobody can call it to order, to desist from the path of lawlessness and unconstitutional acts it has chosen.”

ALSO, PDP, in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Debo Ologunagba, yesterday, said: “The clampdown on revered Muslim cleric, Sheikh Muhammad Nuru Khalid, for speaking truth to power signals a dangerous trend.

The party said, while it refrains from delving into religious issues, there was a need to caution APC that suppressing the concerns of citizens and resorting to fascist measures, where constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression is being brazenly assaulted, is capable of triggering widespread social restiveness and escalating the already tensed situation in the country.