The Presidential Candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to vacate his post over his alleged confession on Friday that the nation’s economy is in bad shape.
In a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday by his Special Assistant on Public Communication, Mr. Phrank Shaibu, Atiku described President Buhari’s confession that the “Nigerian economy has collapsed under his watch as not only a pathetic ploy to attract the sympathy of Nigerians with his false honesty but also, a disguise to get a soft landing from the people he has put under terrible suffering and hardship in the last three and half years.”
“The result, of course, is this late hour confession of failure on the eve of our general elections, in the hope that millions of Nigerians, whom he has condemned to poverty and hardship, will give him a clap for failing abysmally. I dare say that President Buhari has miscalculated badly on this matter because Nigerians are simply fed up with him.”
“The economy has collapsed under his watch and he has by this frank remarks admitted that he has no idea on how to fix it and that is why he summoned the governors to help him. This is really very sad because President Buhari has run out of time and what Nigerians need now is a leadership which has the political will, administrative experience and sound economic acumen to get Nigeria working again,” he stated.
Atiku, who continued on President Buhari’s “confession of the failed economy” said Buhari “has continued to exhibit his cluelessness, incapacity and ineptitude in handling the economy by once again invoking the tired mantra of blaming the past administration and 16 years of PDP rule for his own failure.” Atiku who was reacting to the outcome of the meeting between the President and Governors of 36 states said “the honourable step to take is for the President to step down from his position.”
He said “the confession by the President that the economy had gone out of control” was a confirmation of the forecast by the British multinational bank, HSBC “which predicted that re-electing President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019 could plunge Nigeria into deeper economic hardship.”
“Unless those in-charge of the APC and the party’s supporters are, as usual, suffering from some form of self-delusion, it just does not make any sense for them to say that the APC-led federal government had brought succour to the ordinary Nigerian when President Muhammadu Buhari himself has admitted to Governors of the 36 States of the federation that the economy has gone beyond his control,” The statement said.
“Or do we need a prophet to tell us that the president’s admission of the state of the nation’s economy is a vindication of our long held position and indeed the forecast by HSBC recently cited by the Nigerian media where the bank had said a second term for Buhari would greatly stunt the economy of the country?” he asked.
