Spokesperson to Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the last election, Otunba Segun Showunmi, has described the provision of N5 billion for the distribution of grains to each of the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), recently approved by President Bola Tinubu, as a joke that is not sustainable.
The president had approved the money and 100,000 bags of rice and other grains for distribution to citizens to mitigate the effects of the petroleum subsidy removal.
Addressing a press conference at the national secretariat of the main opposition party in Abuja on Tuesday, Showunmi said that the administration should either deregulate and hand off the pricing of petroleum products or return to the subsidy regime.
According to him, a PDP federal government would not have shared 10 bags of rice per village as it would never have attempted to “deliver palliative care to a bunch of people in a wholesale manner. How many times will they do that?”
Showunmi said: “They have now resulted in bragging, raking, and policy assault.
“The biggest joke is a palliative of rice and wholesale delivery of N5b in the direction of state governors, which to my mind is like giving the fish to the cat with the expectation of delivery to the rat. Brilliant indeed.
“They have not accepted that either you deregulate and take your hands off the pricing of petroleum products or you interfere with it in a veiled return to the subsidy you claim you are unable to sustain, a confused lot.”
Showunmi also observed that the floating of the naira is not yielding the desired result but putting more misery on the people, saying: The I&E window and floating of the forex by the CBN are unfortunately not yielding anything but misery; typical of people who act before they think in a knee-jerk trial-and-error manner, voodoo economics.
Oh, I forgot they have no capability or interest in figuring out and placing consequences on those who ran the forex aground.
Now, at last check, the difference between the bank rate and the black market rate still gives a reasonable headroom for illegal profit, arbitrage they sought to avoid.”
On the appointment and swearing in of ministers, the former campaign spokesman said an Atiku/Okowa PDP cabinet would have been more equitable.
Describing the Tinubu cabinet as “dismal, elephantine, or imprudent,” he added: “It is clear that this government wishes to adopt the rake strategy, not as in poker but as in the bragging that tries to mask crass ill-preparedness, flip-flopping around serious issues, and a deep psychopathic I-don’t-care attitude.
“First, should the government be that large at a time when a lean cabinet seems more necessary given the financial state of the country?
Can a nation be in dire straits and those who created the financial and governance mess be shoving it in our faces as though we have become a captured nation with no way out of the slavery of helplessness?
“The flopper-in-chief has started changing the portfolios even before they start their original assignments, indicative of trial and error and a lack of preparation.
“Not much has changed in the recycled status quo, resembling the same of the same, and the most notorious bullies have the undeserved right to add to the misery of the people in some sad reality of gangsterism of the new order.
“The big issues before the nation in no particular order are accountability and justice, stabilising the Naira, security, national cohesion, the economy (jobs), and national reorientation, to mention but a few.
“In the last nearly 82 or so days, our new helmsman has demystified himself, and whatever toga of competence that was mouthed, unfortunately, they neither allowed the media to ask questions during the campaign nor allowed for sober interrogation of the issues by the stakeholders, who seemed to have been hoodwinked with irrelevances as opposed to asking the critical how.
“First, they scrapped the Niger Delta ministry, then they hurriedly put it back. Someone should pinch me to wake up not just me but a captured people who must, barring the ruling of the court, endure a long road to freedom.
“There is no point saying the obvious in terms of the lopsidedness and favouritism that the cabinet has shown.
“Well, let us now get ready for the consequences of what is before us in this elephantine cabinet that has just been inaugurated.
“Nigerians must learn that election choices have consequences, and now I welcome us all to dim hope with nothing assured.”
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