2023: You Represent Nigeria’s ‘Wasted Past’ – APC Blasts Atiku, PDP

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has slammed the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party  (PDP) and its 2019 presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, over the latter’s recent tweet to his party members ahead of 2023 general elections.

Atiku, a former vice president, in a tweet on Saturday, urged members of his party to focus on “rebuilding and strengthening our party for the challenges ahead of us rather focusing on elections at this early period.”

But reacting on Sunday night, the APC described the 16 year-rule of the PDP as “an era synonymous with wastefulness and festered corruption, which the country is still struggling with.”

The party also accused the former vice president of “acting in contrast to an advice he earlier issued”.

It said, “Atiku is focusing on how to corner the 2023 presidential ticket of the PDP or any of the other political parties where he may choose to purchase his ticket.”

“Atiku and the PDP represent the wasted past which Nigerians have chosen to discard and correct. The era when national assets were a bazaar for cronies and friends; an era when funds were approved and released for projects that were never executed; an era of waste and impunity; an era of voodoo economy; an era when corruption was a state policy,” the ruling party said.

The APC claimed that “Nigerians now enjoy a new dispensation which has ensured massive infrastructural development covering the rail, road, agriculture, aviation, ports, education and health sectors.”

It also highlighted “stoppage of budget paddling, pruning out thousands of ghost workers, economic diversification, rapid infrastructure development, intensification of fight against violent extremism” as part of President Muhammadu Buhari landmark achievements.

“While ongoing diversification efforts have recorded great successes particularly in the agricultural sector, oil sector reforms have been landmark. Fuel queues have vanished, cross border smuggling of petroleum products, the subsidy racket and roundtripping by oil marketers which were all perfected under successive PDP administrations have been checked.

“The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) recently reported a massive drop of 570 million litres from 1.76 billion litres at 55.74 million litres per day distributed in July 2019, a direct result of the government’s effort to check cross border smuggling activities,” the APC spokesperson, Lanre Issa-Onilu, also noted in the statement.