PDP chieftain, COSEYL fault Tinubu’s bloated cabinet, handling of palliatives

•‘Why President is treating Nigerians as war prisoners’

A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has faulted what he called massive poverty of ideas and inconsistencies in the Bola Tinubu administration, saying an over-bloated cabinet amid lean economic resources demonstrates incompetence.

At a press conference, yesterday, Segun Showunmi, a former governorship aspirant in Ogun State and former spokesperson of PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, said policy summersaults of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have demystified President Tinubu, indicating the ruling party was never prepared for governance.

Flip-flops “around serious issues,” show “deep psychopathic I-don’t-care attitude,” he said, wondering why “a nation will be in dire straits and those who created the financial and governance mess will be shoving it in our faces as though we have become a captured nation, with no way out of the slavery of helplessness.”

According to Showunmi, the biggest joke was the Federal Government’s rice palliative and N5 billion given to state governors to cushion the effect of fuel subsidy removal on the citizenry. He described the gesture as “giving fish to the cat with the expectation of delivery to the rat.”

He also accused the President of running a voodoo economy, allowing the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to float the national currency, and leaving people in misery.

This was as Coalition of South East Youth Leaders (COSEYL) accused Tinubu of using fuel subsidy palliatives as a ploy to deceive Nigerians into accepting fuel price hike.

COSEYL, which demanded reversal of fuel pump price to N165 per litre, also accused Tinubu of “treating Nigerians as war prisoners.”

In a statement by President General, Goodluck Ibem, the group claimed Tinubu “intends to use the palliative to deceive some gullible Nigerians into accepting fraudulent current fuel price of N630 per litre.”

It, therefore, asked the President to stop taking Nigerians for granted but rather use his privileged position to better their welfare.

COSEYL said: “Nigerians have spoken in clear and loud terms that we want a reversal to N165 per litre for petrol…forget about his Greek Gift of sharing palliatives to few party members, in a bid to deceive Nigerians into believing that he cares, when in actual sense, Nigerians are dying through hardship and hunger.

“The unilateral increment of fuel price and other petroleum products, aimed at making life difficult for citizens, is a confirmation that President Tinubu has no regard for the lives of Nigerians. He sees Nigerians as his prisoners who have no choice but accept anything he wants or desires to do, which is not in tandem with democratic tenets.”