The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on Monday, described President Bola Tinubu’s New Year address as a harvest of lies and empty promises.
The president, in the address, assured Nigerians of a new minimum wage this year.
He also revealed that the Federal government would cultivate 500,000 hectares of land to address food shortage, among other measures, in the New Year.
But the PDP, through a statement by its National Publicity Secretary Debo Ologunagba, decried the president’s failure to address any critical issues plaguing the country.
It added that the address is un-presidential, uninspiring and amounts to a waste of valuable time.
The PDP also demanded a comprehensive account of Nigeria’s earnings under Tinubu’s watch.
The statement read: “The President failed to address critical issues of insecurity, decayed infrastructure, comatose manufacturing and productive sectors.
“He also failed to touch the crushing 28% inflation rate, continuing plunge of the Naira, alarming unemployment, excruciating poverty and economic hardship occasioned by his administration’s reckless, ill-advised and insensitive policies and programmes.
“President Tinubu failed to address the vexatious issue of incompetence, insensitivity, massive profligacy, and unbridled treasury-looting inherent in his administration, which have put our nation in dire strait.
“More distressing is that President Tinubu had no words in his New Year address for the Christmas Eve genocidal massacre of over 200 Nigerians by terrorists in Plateau State.
“It is an unpardonable assault on the sensibility of Nigerians for President Tinubu to brazenly assert that ‘everything I have done in office, every decision I have taken and every trip I have undertaken outside the shores of our land, since I assumed office on 29 May 2023, has been done in the best interest of our country’.
“On the contrary, all decisions and actions of the Tinubu Presidency including the approval of increase in the pump price of fuel from N167 to over N700 per litre, devaluation of the naira with the consequential high costs and hardship; skewing of the 2024 budget in favour of luxury appetite of the Presidency and APC leaders without concrete policies to revive the economy and create jobs; the wasteful foreign trips with political cronies and failure to address the mindless killings across the nation cannot be said to be in the interest of our country.
“Furthermore, the undermining of the Constitution and institutions of democracy including attempts to emasculate the National Assembly and compromising of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) through the appointment of APC card-carrying members as Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC) cannot be in the interest of the nation.
“President Tinubu’s claims that his anti-people actions and policies, with their calamitous consequences, are in the interest of the nation further confirms that this administration is deliberately subjecting Nigerians to hardship as a way to suppress them to surrender to totalitarianism.
“President Tinubu ought to have used the opportunity presented by the New Year to apologise to Nigerians and marshal out steps to address our national challenges, including those responsible for the exiting of multinational manufacturing companies and other businesses from our country.
“What Nigerians demand of President Tinubu is to provide a comprehensive account of our nation’s earnings. These include the proceeds from the removal of subsidy on petroleum products, especially in the face of allegations that the earnings are being diverted to private pockets of APC leaders and their cronies.
“The National Assembly is invited to step up and perform its constitutional role of oversight to hold the executive arm accountable as the custodian of the nation’s purse,” the statement added.