The Action Democratic Party (ADP) has described the New Year message by President Muhammadu Buhari as a Greek gift.

In a statement issued in Lagos by its spokesman, Prince Adelaja Adeoye, the party said it had critically studied the New Year message and that “it is nothing but a ploy to deceive Nigerians again as another election year is around the corner”, adding that “Buhari has consistently failed to use every opportunity available to him to redeem his battered image before Nigerians,”

Commenting on the fuel crisis, Adeoye said that Buhari had resorted to cheap blackmail against oil marketers instead of taking responsibility for the lingering fuel scarcity that had inflicted undue pains and hardship on Nigerians. He added that the only thing that the Buhari administration was good at was blame game.

ADP went further to say that when Buhari was Minister for Petroleum in 1974 and later military dictator in 1984 before he was forcefully kicked out, 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.

ADP said that despite the close to N20 trillion already budgeted since Buhari's assumption of office in 2015, no significant infrastructural improvement could be pointed to except the helipad he built for his private use in his home town at Daura, Kastina State.

The party said that even with reports of huge monies recovered, there had 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," ADP said.

"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 was next to zero because of the experience the country had had in the past three years of the Buhari administration.

On the issue of restructuring Nigeria, ADP said it was shocked that the President had reduced the agitations for devolution of powers by the Federal Government to the arguments for the parliamentary system of government. The party said that the President continued to show that he was not abreast of issues in his own country and regarded the President’s position that “no structure is perfect” as vague and a continuous deployment of delay tactics, including tactical way of avoiding responsibility.

The party also said that the President gloated about stabilising the exchange rate at N365 to the United States dollar and that there has been improvement of the economy. "The economy that the President speaks so highly about is the same one that has lost over seven million jobs since 2015."

ADP believed that it was capable of presenting a credible candidate who could end the sufferings of all Nigerians in 2019. It therefore urged all Nigerians to support the party in its bid to make Nigeria work.

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