We handed over $550 billion economy to APC – PDP

According to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC) took over $550 billion in assets in 2015.

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) released a statement on Thursday commemorating the party’s 25th anniversary on its official X, in which it accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of squandering Nigeria’s future by amassing N85 trillion in foreign debt in just eight years.

When asked about its success, the PDP issued a statement reading in part, “Today, the PDP celebrates the resilience of Nigerians in the democratic process and particularly the founding leaders and teeming members of our Party for their sacrificial roles in returning, nurturing, and sustaining democracy in our country.”

“It is on record that the PDP administration, through deft management of the economy, achieved $18bn debt relief from the Paris and London Clubs, consolidated the banking sector, revolutionised the telecommunication sector, revamped the oil and gas, manufacturing, aviation, agriculture, real estate and other critical sectors to turn the inherited moribund economy into one of the fastest growing in the world and handed over a $550 billion economy (largest in Africa and 26

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) increased to over $8 billion under PDP leadership, and our Foreign Exchange Reserves increased from $2 billion in 1999 to over $40 billion in 2014. Our FDI in 2022 has dropped to $-0.19bn due to the incompetent and unscrupulous APC administration. According to JP Morgan, Nigeria’s Foreign Exchange Reserves dropped to $3.7bn as of the end of December 2022, but the APC government has said nothing about this.

“Unfortunately, the APC has rolled back all the progress made by the PDP over the past eight years, turning our country into the poverty capital of the world with a frightening 35% unemployment rate, where hunger, starvation, strange diseases, and sudden deaths now ravage our citizens.

With its reckless accumulation of N85 trillion in foreign debt and no matching development project to show for it, the dishonest APC administration has successfully mortgaged the future of our nation.

The Naira has plummeted from N197 to US$1 under the PDP to an awful over N900 to US$1; gasoline, which sold for N87 per liter by 2015, now sells for over N600 per liter; and big international corporations are leaving Nigeria under the cruel, corrupt, and incompetent APC’s rule. This is on top of the numerous other new taxes, fees, and tariffs that the APC government has imposed on its citizenry.

According to one commentator, “life in Nigeria under the APC has become very unbearable, such that Nigerians are now resorting to suicide and slavery mission abroad as options.”

PDP has urged the people of Nigeria to maintain their optimism in the face of the current dismal scenario, believing that their democratic mandate will finally prevail.