The Action Democratic Party (ADP) has described the New Year message by President Muhammadu Buhari as a Greek Gift.
This is contained in a statement issued in Lagos on Tuesday by its spokesman, Prince Adelaja Adeoye.
ADP said the message is nothing but a ploy to deceive Nigerians again as another election year is around the corner.
The party said that Buhari has consistently failed to use every opportunity available to him to
redeem his “battered image” before Nigerians.
As regards the fuel crisis, ADP said that Buhari has resorted to cheap blackmail against oil marketers instead of taking responsibility for the lingering fuel scarcity that has inflicted undue pains and hardship on Nigerians.
The party added that when Buhari was a Minister for Petroleum in 1974 and military dictator in 1984, the same blame game was what he employed.
“Buhari has never taken responsibility for any of his failures. Why is he President, if he cannot solve problems with all the paraphernalia of government at his disposal?” Adelaja asked.
“Despite the close to N20 trillion already budgeted since Buhari’s assumption of office in 2015, no significant infrastructural improvement can be pointed to except the helipad he built for his private use in his home town at Daura, Kastina State.
“Even with reports of huge monies recovered, there have been no signs of reinvestment to improve the lives of the people. Nigerians are poorer under Buhari than any other President that has ever led the country.
“The President is promising massive infrastructure in rails, roads and power this new year and the ADP has asked what he has been doing for almost three years.
“Asserting that the probability of having all these projects in an election year is next to zero because of the experience we have had in the past three years of this administration. The party is not optimistic about these plans.”
On the issue of restructuring Nigeria, the party said it is shocked that the President has reduced the agitations for devolution of powers by the federal government to the arguments for the parliamentary system of government.
ADP said the President continues to show that he is not abreast of issues in his own country.
The party added that “President gloats about stabilizing the exchange rate at ^365 to the dollar and that there has been improvement of the economy but the party wonders how this is something to celebrate.
“The economy that the President speaks so highly about is the same one that has lost over 7 million jobs since 2015 and the party also wonders the statistics that back the President’s claims other than the data from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics.
“ADP believes that it is capable of presenting a credible candidate who can end the sufferings of all Nigerians in 2019,” the statement concluded.