Atiku Asks President Buhari To Resign Over ‘Economy In Bad Shape’ Comment

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to resign over the comment he made on Friday that Nigeria’s economy was in a bad shape.

On Friday, December 14, 2018, President Buhari met with governors at the State House, Abuja.

After the meeting, Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara and Chairman of Nigerian Governors’ Forum told newsmen that Buhari said that “the economy is in bad shape and that we have to come together, think and rethink on the way forward.”

Atiku Abubakar, In a statement released by his Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu on Sunday, December 16, 2018, said Buhari’s statement is a ploy to attract the sympathy of Nigerians over his incompetence as a president.

“The result of course is this late hour confession of failure on the eve of our general elections, in the hope that millions of Nigerians, whom he has condemned to poverty and hardship will give him a clap for failing abysmally. I dare say that President Buhari has miscalculated badly on this matter because Nigerians are simply fed up with him.

“The economy has collapsed under his watch and he has by this frank remarks admitted that he has no idea on how to fix it and that is why he summoned the governors to help him. This is really very sad because President Buhari has run out of time and what Nigerians need now is a leadership which has the political will, administrative experience and sound economic acumen to get Nigeria working again.”

The PDP presidential candidate said the honorable step to take is for President Buhari to resign from his position.

“Unless those in charge of the APC and the party’s supporters are, as usual, suffering from some form of self-delusion, it just does not make any sense for them to say that the APC-led Federal Government had brought succour to the ordinary Nigerian when President Muhammadu Buhari himself has admitted to governors of the 36 states of the federation that the economy has gone beyond his control.”

“Or do we need a prophet to tell us that the president’s admission of the state of the nation’s economy is a vindication of our long-held position and indeed the forecast by HSBC recently cited by the Nigerian media where the bank had said a second term for Buhari would greatly stunt the economy of the country?

“The exchange rate of the naira to the US dollar when the APC assumed office in 2015 was about N170 (official rate) to the dollar. Today it is N360 to the dollar. Today, millions of Nigerians, most of them youths, are unemployed, forcing them to become professional beggars who wait with bated breath for Federal Government’s monthly N5,000 handout and N10,000 Tradermoni aimed at bribing them to re-elect the party in the forthcoming elections,” the statement said.

“Power generation has actually dipped from 4,949 megawatts PDP left in 2015 to less than 3,500 megawatts even though Buhari’s handlers consistently claim that 7,000 megawatts is what is currently being generated. What more evidence do we need to know that the APC has been a curse rather than a blessing to our country.”

“It is amazing that, in this day and age when leaders of nations are expected to be creative and think outside the box, by applying new digital tools and embracing new thinking in addressing the emerging challenges to modern governance, our own president is still living in the Paleolithic age of blame game and buck passing as responsible for his failures. What this simply means is that President Buhari was not really prepared for governance and did not even understand the simplest intricacies of running a national economy as big as Nigeria.

“This is really tragic and it is obvious that President Buhari has come to the end of the road and has completely given up on the next steps to advance Nigeria, while those whom his dear wife openly declared misled his administration into this economic quagmire are still drumming up support for his next level of more hardship, suffering, unprovoked deaths as a result of misgovernance.”