By Osita Chinedu
The Federal Government of Nigeria has called on the state governors from the opposition party, The Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) to focus on the basic reasons they were elected into power and desist from distracting the President.
This was contained in a press statement signed by the Special Assistant (Media) to the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Rabiu Ibrahim on Sunday in reaction to a call made by the opposition party governors demanding that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should resign if he cannot provide sustainable solutions to the country’s challenges.
The statement held that the state governors should employ the funds in their coffers for the socioeconomic development of their various states since the FG increased the revenue of the entire 36 states of the federation including the FCT immediately after the removal of fuel subsidy in May, 2023.
According to the statement, “The call is nothing but an attempt at distraction by people who should instead be busy supporting the president’s effort at bringing economic relief to the Nigerian people. It is our considered view that the PDP and its governors should not be seeking, through the backdoor of intimidation, what they have consistently failed to achieve by democratic means, since 2015.
“Those who could not bring transformational change when they had a lengthy chance to, should not seek to interrupt or distract those who are busy at work on the presidential vision that Nigerians elected them to implement.
Ibrahim attested further that the President has generously extended financial assistance to all the state governments despite the party affiliations.
“The President and his administration recognise the unfinished business of revamping our national economy kick-started by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, through programmes focused on large-scale infrastructure, social welfare, prioritizing the equipping and welfare of the military and security agencies, and reclaiming Nigeria’s strategic place in the comity of nations. Boko Haram and its affiliates, on the ascendancy in 2014/2015, have since been decimated, and similar bold gains are now being made with bandits and other criminals.
“Nigerians have not forgotten that it was the APC administration that cleared several liabilities left behind by the PDP government, such as subsidy claims by oil marketers, Paris Club Refunds, unpaid pensions, gratuities, and salary arrears owed various categories of pensioners from liquidated and existing State-Owned Enterprises.
“Major oil sector reforms that the PDP touted for years but could not deliver – passage of the PIB, new refineries, as well as the revamp of existing ones, and so on – are the very real and continuing legacies of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
“All of these have been accomplished without access to the oil windfall that the PDP government enjoyed for much of the time that it was in power, and also against the backdrop of the most devastating global shock since the Second World War: the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We must continue to state these facts so Nigerians will know where we are coming from, and appreciate what is being done in its full context.”
The statement concluded by reiterating that the president is not and can never be overwhelmed by the country’s challenges but is squarely facing them to bring sustainable solutions as the foundations that the emerging new Nigeria will be built upon.
