Ahead of the 2019 elections, Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has lampooned the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government, saying under its watch, the nation has witnessed massive job losses while 90 million Nigerians are living in extreme poverty.

Atiku also faulted the President for claiming to have delivered on his campaign promises recently at a zonal rally in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom state capital. In a statement signed by his media assistant, Paul Ibe and made available to journalists, the former Vice President claimed that contrary to the President’s optimism, that poverty has indeed grown worse in the past four months.

“Ironically, a day before the President made that statement, it was revealed that the number of Nigerians living in extreme poverty had increased from 87 million to 90 million in just 4 months. Going by that sharp rate of increase, the whole country will be in extreme poverty if Nigerians make the mistake of re-electing Buhari” he said.

According to the PDP flag bearer, “except the President made a vow to impoverish Nigerians, it is hard to see how he could have fulfilled his promises with such pervasive poverty and hunger in the land.

“This is even as the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, NBS, revealed a week to the President’s unfortunate statement that unemployment had doubled from the 14% he met it in May 2015 to 23.1% in December of 2018.”

Atiku also urged President Buhari to admit his helplessness in the fight against insurgency, noting that his claim that the Boko Haram fundamentalist sect remain defeated, is not only absurd but unfortunate.

“The most blatant insult from the President was his assertion at Uyo that ‘We have defeated Boko Haram.’ It was most insensitive of the President to have said such on a day that foreign and domestic media reported the entrapment of our gallant troops by Boko Haram/Islamic Militants in West Africa Province, ISWAP in Baga, with as much as 700 hundred reported missing.

“Even more indicting is the statement from the US based International Strategic Studies Association, which revealed that the Boko Haram insurgency was lingering due to the massive corruption around President Muhammadu Buhari.

“How would those soldiers feel, how would their families feel, how would their colleagues in the barracks feel when they are facing a life and death situation and their Commander-in-Chief is impervious to reality?” the statement added.

•Sourced from a Vanguard report

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