The Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, has challenged the Presidency to prove to Nigerians that the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP-led Federal Government in the past 14 years is not responsible for the nation's economic and political problems.
The party threw the challenge while responding to what it described as "the Presidency's hysterical reaction" to the recent speech by its National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu at the British African Diaspora Conference in London.
In a statement yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the ACN said instead of reading the speech objectively, the Presidency pressed the panic button by sending its self-confessed "attack dog" to criticise a report it had barely read and denigrate the party and its leader.
"The Presidency went after the messenger rather than the message, rehashing its old and stale clichés about the ACN and its leader for daring to carry out an objective analysis of the state of our economy as well as the state of the nation and also suggesting the way forward," the party said.
The ACN said the Presidency should rather tell Nigerians whether indeed the poverty level in the country has reduced since 1999 when the PDP assumed power at the centre, as well as how much unemployment has been tamed and how far the socio-economic inequality has been curbed.
"This is how to counter any perceived incorrect assertion by any critic, instead of engaging in name calling," it said, adding that "the assertion by Asiwaju in his speech tallies with our earlier statement that what we are experiencing in Nigeria, under the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency, which has been reeling out highfalutin economic statistics, is growth without development, which is useless."
It further said: "As Asiwaju said, the gap between poor and rich widens. There is grinding poverty and people have to work twice as hard each day to make ends meet. There is massive unemployment. Of what use is any leadership that does little to solve these problems?"
The party also challenged the Presidency to deny that it has not twisted the concept of democracy, given its antics in the recently-conducted election of the Nigerian Governors' Forum, NGF, advising that public discourse should be about issues and not personalities.
National Mirror