The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has said President Bola Tinubu’s promise to add N25,000 to the salary of low-grade workers for only six months, amidst the unbearable cost of living, is an insult.

The party also added that the promised cash transfer programme to an additional 15 million vulnerable households, would be another conduit pipe to divert public funds to the leaders of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

PDP in a statement by the National Publicity Secretary Debo Ologunagba, described Tinubu’s indepenIndependence Dayast as empty and said it showed that the president is bereft of ideas.

“President Tinubu’s admission in his speech that his administration is responsible for the current excruciating hardship in the country validates PDP’s position that the Tinubu-led government lacks the competence, capacity, required skills, and humaneness to effectively run the affairs of the nation,” the party stated.

PDP said the president’s speech is merely aspirational, insisting that Nigerians do not need to pass through agonising hardship “if the nation is run by a government that has the required vision and skills to harness and manage our economic potentials, national comparative advantage and expanded value chain that abound in our vast but dormant productive sector.”

It told Tinubu that the expectation of Nigerians was a presidential speech that would provide concrete solutions to critical challenges of the nation, including security as well as the crisis in the electricity and petroleum sectors.

“Indeed, any serious government with requisite capacity and vision will set a Marshall Plan on every critical sector which have the capacity to galvanize and stimulate the economy through job creation,” the party said.

PDP noted that the president showed his unpreparedness through his hasty implementation of ill-planned policies, which it said, “triggered a catastrophic economic failure with unprecedented crippling effects on the productive sector and agonising hardship on Nigerians.

“The ill-planned policies led to the closure and mass exodus of many multinational companies from our country, disabled millions of small and medium enterprises, and resulted in massive loss of jobs across the country.

“It is troubling that President Tinubu’s speech also had no clear-cut measures to revamp the critical sectors of manufacturing, agriculture, food production, transportation, healthcare, education, and other pivotal sectors of life in the country.

“The president’s speech articulated no solutions to the fall of the naira from N187 to the US dollar under the PDP to over N1000 under his watch; no answers to the alarming over 40 per cent unemployment rate and the fact that Nigerians are now daily fleeing the country in droves.

“Furthermore, it is heartrending that the president’s speech had no words on the mindless killings, maiming, abductions, and mass burial of citizens in various parts of the country under his watch.

“He had no reassuring words on the abduction of students in Zamfara State as well as other victims of such dastardly acts across the country,” he said.

The party stated that President Tinubu’s speech has left no one in doubt that the APC administration has no plans, capacity, and competence to handle the crucial and urgent task of governance, which it said, is beyond the party’s managerial ability. (New Telegraph)

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