By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said the declaration of supervising Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, that Nigeria was facing revenue challenges, confirmed its (PDP) stance that President Muhammadu Buhari is not well-equipped to manage the economy of the nation.
At her resumption on Monday, the Minister said the major task before her and members of staff of the ministry was to grow the revenue of Nigeria as well as get the economy back on track.
“These are very challenging times for our country and we are part of the economic team that has been charged with making sure there is economic stability in our country,” the Minister had said.
She had further said, “We have very serious revenue challenges and it is up to us to shore up the revenues of this country.”
According to her, “Mr President has a lot of confidence that we can do this. We are working for Mr President, but at the end of the day, we are working for the benefit of the citizens of our country.”
“There are a lot of sacrifices that I know that you have done, and we are going to push ourselves to still do more so that at the end of the day we will say Alhamdulillah– glory be to God,” she also stated.
But reacting to this in a statement issued by its spokesman, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, the opposition party said this declaration by Mrs Ahmed showed Mr Buhari lacked the creative capacity and competence to run a productive economy.
The party also blamed the revenue challenge on corruption and diversion of funds by the party in government.
“Had President Buhari heeded wise counsel from Nigerians to accept his incompetence, hands off economic issues, end the corruption in his presidency and get a strong economic team to manage our economy, our foreign direct investments and domestic productivity would not have crumbled,” the statement noted.
The PDP alleged that President Buhari, in a space of three years, de-marketed the nation’s economy through his utterances, harsh economic policies, condoning of corruption by his officials and failure to develop and drive a clear-cut economic blueprint for the nation.
“Nigerians expect Mrs Ahmed to show patriotism and courage by exposing the corruption in the financial sector under Buhari, set in motion the machinery to recover the over N10 trillion looted by the presidency cabal and channel the fund back into the economy.
“Our worry, however, is that nothing much will come out from the supervising minister as those who saw to her appointment are members of the same presidency cabal that used the disgraced erstwhile Finance Minister, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, as clearing house to fritter away our national resources.”
