The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) has said that in the past one year, the All Progressives Congress APC-led government has worsened the economic situation of Nigeria through its policies and thereby weaponizing poverty.
Addressing journalists on Tuesday in Abuja on the state of the nation after one year of President Bola Tinubu’s administration, the National Spokesman of CUPP, Comrade Mark Adebayo said many Nigerians had assumed that President Tinubu would would perform a little better than his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, in the areas of economy, security, education, health, infrastructure and so forth.
He said judging by the last one year of another APC government, CUPP can safely conclude that the country’s situation has not only worsened significantly but is even worsening by the day.
Adebayo said Nigeria is a captured nation by internal and external retrogressive forces of insatiable and rapacious appetite for the mortgaging of Nigeria’s commonwealth in the service of personal aggrandisement.
“For the first time in the history of this country, Nigeria was unfortunate to have a president whose first minute in office was marked by unprecedented infliction of unmitigated suffering on the people.
“Even before the new president left the Eagle Square where he was inaugurated, Nigerians had been hit with what can be described as the most cruel economic assault that turned our lives upside-down, made businesses collapse, took food off millions of tables, sent children out of schools in their millions, increased insecurity exponentially, battered lives and scattered marriages irretrievably because the pump prices of fuel were increased by about 600% and the country’s inflation digits tripled instantaneously.
“All of these within the first 60 seconds of Tinubu’s presidency and Nigerians are yet to recover from that tragedy till date. His welcome package to Nigerians was that of mass suffering, mass hunger, mass poverty and a government that is absolutely insensitive to the plights of Nigerians.
ALSO READ: 7 Most Effective Ways to Learn a New Language
“The sudden subsidy removal was both thoughtless and wicked! Without any sort of cushioning policy frameworks, the president went off-script and unleashed what amounted economic terrorism on Nigerians by declaring that subsidy was gone! Gone with the subsidy was our joy, hope and high expectations of a Tinubu administration that most thought was coming with a new deal of development, prosperity, peace and progress that he passionately campaigned on during the electioneering period.
He maintained that there is not a single justification for the subsidy removal in the manner it was done. Adebayo said the desperation of the president to implement the neo-liberal economic policies allegedly imposed by the International Monetary Fund and other global financial institutions that seek to perpetually keep Africa backwards was the singular factor in that anti-people action which has reduced our Naira to just a little better than waste paper.
“One year after, insecurity is on the crease. Right here in the center of Abuja, kidnappers and one-chance criminals are on rampage. Just that the crime rates in Abuja are being underreported by the media and the victims because of their lack of confidence in our security agencies. Just last week, a friend was kidnapped from Wuse Zone 1 and all her accounts were wiped clean, dispossessed of all her belongings and abandoned in an isolated place after hours of driving around Abuja without being accosted by security agents. She narrowly escaped death.
“To think that Abuja, the seat of government power and authority, where the president lives, where the IG of Police and all the heads of military, paramilitary and intelligence agencies, including the National Security Adviser reside can be this insecure is more than troubling. If they cannot secure Abuja where they are all resident, how can anyone expect them to secure entire Nigeria?
“For the past one week or more, we have seen ministers under this government reel out fantastic statistics about how wonderfully they had performed in the last one year, but Nigerians cannot see those wonderful things they are claiming to have achieved. It’s all about the more you look, the less you see. It is all audio without visuals.
“The real statistics is that there is greater unemployment and job losses in the last one year. It is that majority Nigerians have been economically disempowered as micro- and macroeconomic enterprises are collapsing in droves.
“When we talk about state capture, time will not permit us to interrogate the activities of a company like the Chagoury group. But very soon we shall do a thorough analysis of how this group’s activities cannot be said to be in the overall interest of Nigeria as a country except to benefit those in this government who romance that group.
“The so-called Lagos-Calabar coastal highway, for instance, is a wasteful white elephant project with no immediate direct economic benefits to Nigerians.
“This government has not performed well in the last one year at all and this is not opposition cynicism. It is both factual and real for all to see. All Nigerians understand that things have not been this bad.
“This government is both confused and clueless which informs the series of policy somersaults and trial by error they have been engaging in for the past one year which throws the socioeconomic space into more confusion and crises.
“This situation must teach Nigerians to take full advantage of the fundamental elements of democracy about the capacity of the citizens to make informed choices at periodic elections. Whatever we got wrong in 2023, we must get right in 2027 by making the right choice devoid of the current voids and damnation.
“We have all seen what this government can do and nobody should be under any illusion that anything dramatic can change for the better except if it would worsen. They have nothing more to offer except fake promises and unverifiable statistics full of lies”, he added.
NIGERIAN TRIBUNE