A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Ebenezer Babatope and the member representing Pankshin, Kanke, Kanam federal constituency of Plateau State in the House of Representatives, Honourable Golu Timothy, on Wednesday, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to tackle the nation’s multi-faceted problems and stop blaming the PDP for shortcomings of the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led administration.
The duo spoke with the Nigerian Tribune in Abuja, on Wednesday, in separate interviews, while reacting to a statement credited to Buhari that he inherited nothing from the 16 years administration of the PDP and that the party was responsible for the current nation’s economic recession.
According to Babatope, a former Transport and Aviation Minister, “President Buhari’s statement is laughable; this is amazing, he should address the issue of hunger in the land, as Nigerians are dying of hunger.
“When the PDP was in goverment, he should tell the whole world how much was the exchange rate. Today, a Dollar goes for N450. How much was a bag of rice? How much was a litre of fuel? Buhari should face the acts of good governance before the bubble bursts,” he declared.
Babatope appealed to the media, the organised labour, the civil society organisations and elders, including former presidents, to wade into the nation’s current predicament, with a view to allowing Buhari to see the reality on ground and change his style of administration before it would be too late.
In his own reaction, Honourable Golu stated that the president was very unfair to former presidents, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the late Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, and the PDP, which provided a democratically conducive environment for him to become a president.
According to Honourable Golu, “has Buhari forgotten so soon that Obasanjo transformed the telecommunications sector; Yar’Adua and Jonathan transformed the agriculture, railway and infrastructure sectors?
“He is also being unfair to former governor Rotimi Amaechi, Aminu Tambuwal and all those who ran away from the PDP to form the APC and worked for him to become the president.
“He should tender unreserved apology to the PDP and Nigerians in general, and address our problems as a nation. We are fed up,” he stated.
Meanwhile, the PDP has called on President Buhari to return the nation back to where it was at the time of his takeover and, thereafter, resign from office.
The opposition’s call came following the recession in the country, with the party maintaining that the president had no capacity to revive the economy.
In a statement issued by the spokesman of the Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led national caretaker committee, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, in Abuja, on Wednesday, it also lambasted the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, over her recent description of recession as just “a word.”
The party said “the earlier the president and his team quit, the better for the country,” adding that “there is no better time than now to make this call for the president to return the country to how he met it and quit, or right away quit for a more experienced team to take over.”
Expressing worries about the state of affairs of the country, the opposition party wondered whether the finance minister’s statement “as a result of ignorance, lack of patriotism or in line with President Buhari’s comment that his ministers are noisemakers.”