The newly elected Enugu State Chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Comrade Adolphus Udeh has mocked the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over its pledge to rescue Nigeria.
According to Udeh, before rescuing Nigeria, PDP should first account for the uncountable underdevelopment obstacles the party embedded in the system, prior to their exit from power in 2015.
In a press statement in Enugu, on Sunday, Udeh said he closely observed the PDP convention which held on Saturday at Eagle Square Abuja where speaker after speaker lampooned the APC and claimed that they want to rescue Nigeria.
He blamed the current socio-economic challenges confronting Nigeria under the APC government on PDP’s 16 years of misrule.
Udeh said, “is it not better PDP starts by first accounting for uncountable underdevelopment obstacles they embedded in the system before their exit in 2015?
” PDP acted like a tenant who wrote a favourable contract agreement for itself against Nigeria.
“Take the power sector for instance where the contract agreement between the Federal Government and DisCos and GenCos are in favour of the private companies. PDP weaved these skewed contract agreements and in fact nominated those less than efficient companies.”
Comrade Udeh noted that in democracy, President Buhari cannot just wake up and cancel the contracts, stressing that it takes time to unbundle the less than transparent clauses in the contract.
“The outcome is gross unemployment and waste of public funds, as the Federal Government was compelled to invest over N1 trillions to patch up.
“According to IMF, Nigeria yearly loses $29 billion, which is 5.8% of her GDP, due to lack of reliable power supply. And listen to the President of African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, who blamed the poor electricity value chain sector for the sorry state of our industrial development.”
On why it is taking the Federal Government led by APC six years to untangle the mess, Udeh explained that democracy had its own speed, due process and checks and balances.
He maintained that Mr. President cannot wake up one morning and revoke contract agreements no matter how faulty, otherwise, the media would accuse him of dictatorship and blame him for scaring off foreign investors.
He, however, said they were happy that the Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, an engineer, had an answer to the intractable problem in the electricity value chain.
Udeh added that they were not talking of budgeted and abandoned federal roads, hospitals, universities and the celebrated N23 billion for three GreenField Refineries that the PDP announced in 2010, which could have saved over N5 trillion for Nigeria, had it been completed.
“And this was happening when oil sold an average of $100 per barrel and Nigeria had then over $40 billion Excess Crude Account,” he said.
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