- APC Blames Opposition Parties For Instigating Masses Into Protest
- PDP Fires Back, Says APC’s Insensitive, Relishing Life-Discounting Situation In The Country
The biting hardship in Nigeria has led to a war of words between the ruling All-Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition parties led by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
The Matrix reports that protest had rocked Minna, the capital of Niger State, and Kano State on Monday over the hardship in the country.
Reacting to these protests, the APC laid the blame at the doorsteps of the opposition parties who have resorted to instigating unsuspecting youths to protests over the hardship in the country.
The National Publicity Secretary of the party, Felix Morka, in a statement issued on Tuesday, maintained that the protests in Minna and Kano on Monday were the manifestation of the plot.
He said it was part of desperation to portray the ruling party as underperforming.
“In its arrant desperation to portray APC-led administration as under-performing, opposition parties have resorted to instigating unsuspecting young people to protests in the streets of some major cities.
“The protests in Minna and Kano on Monday were the manifestation of this devious and unpatriotic plot. That the protests happened simultaneously in both cities is not coincidental.
“It bears a bold stamp of an orchestrated and coordinated effort to instigate unrest and undermine the government. This mercenary opposition tactic is a clear and present threat to public peace and national security,” he said.
Morka, while saying the ruling party recognises the right of citizens to engage in peaceful protest, urged the people to be vigilant and not lend themselves to the opposition to promote social strife by its incendiary rhetoric and manipulative plots.
He noted that the President Bola Tinubu-led administration was solidly committed to doing everything in its power to mitigate the transient pains of important reforms crucial to economic recovery and sustainable prosperity for all Nigerians.
Firing back, the PDP on Tuesday berated the APC for politicising protests by Nigerians against the economic hardship in the country.
In a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, the major opposition party decried the APC’s insensitivity to the plights of Nigerians.
The statement read: “The action of the APC in threatening Nigerians for exercising their democratic and Constitutional right to protest in the face of misrule, agonising poverty, hunger, killings, and other harrowing experiences under the Tinubu administration shows that the APC is insensitive and relishes the life-discounting situation in the country.
“It is an assault on the sensibility of the people that rather than providing answers to how the Tinubu-led APC government in a space of nine months, turned the nation’s economy upside down leading to terrifying food scarcity and catastrophic high cost of living, the APC is seeking to label and clamp down on the suffering masses.
“The APC is insensitive to the fact that because of its policies more than 104 million citizens have sunk deeper into poverty; Nigerians can no longer afford their daily meals with families now going to bed on empty stomachs as poverty rate soars to over 46%.
“Any government that has an idea of macro-economic policy management ought to have recognized that the suffocating policies of abrupt increase in the pump price of petroleum products, high cost of electricity and arbitrary floating of the Naira as executed by the Tinubu administration without due considerations, would have excruciating consequences to the economy as being witnessed today.
“These thoughtless policies by President Tinubu and the APC are responsible for the crippling of the productive sector with a 28% inflation rate, crashing of the Naira from N167 to over N1,500 to a Dollar, closure of millions of businesses and mass exodus of international companies from Nigeria resulting to a distressing 41% unemployment rate and unbearable pressure on millions of families across the country.
“Is it not provocative that in the last eight years and nine months, instead of deploying the nation’s resources for the improvement of critical infrastructure and the productive sectors, Nigerians have witnessed massive looting of over N20 trillion by APC leaders and its officials in government through direct pillaging of government vaults, budget padding, contract inflation, oil subsidy scam, palliative racketeering and phony programs which have no benefit and consequence to the lives of the citizens?
“Moreover, the APC and the Tinubu administration have remained insensitive to the mass killings, kidnapping, and other acts of terrorism ravaging the country without proffering any concrete action plan and policies to address this multifarious consuming carnage.”
