From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja

People Democratic Party (PDP) National Caretaker Committee has faulted the claims of President Muhammadu Buhari that his administration has met the aspirations of Nigerians in the  areas of security, anti-corruption and revitalising the economy.

The party in a statement issued by its spokesman, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, in Abuja, yesterday,   said the All Progressives Congress (APC) has failed woefully in the last two years.

The PDP said the immediate past administration-led by former  president Goodluck Jonathan handed over a buoyant economy to President Buhari, but the APC administration has plunged the country into a recession.

“The immediate past PDP government of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan grew Nigeria’s GDP from $270.5 billion in 2009, and handed over a Nigeria that had grown to become the fastest growing and largest economy in Africa and the 24th largest in the world, with a GDP of $574 billion. In May 2015, the PDP also handed over a single digit inflation rate but today, inflation rate is at a double digit of 17.26 per cent.

“The Buhari government is indeed clueless and had no economic plan until March 2017 when it launched the so-called recovery plan. The economy is at a standstill. Major infrastructural development that began with the previous administrations of the PDP have been abandoned.

“Power generation dwindled from over 5,000mw in 2015 to the present all time low of less than 2,000mw. The only project of note that this government has ever commissioned is the Abuja-Kaduna railroad which was 99 percent completed by the PDP administration,” the party stated.

The PDP said apart from abusing the Presidential Initiative for the North East (PINE), created by Jonathan, the APC administration has equally not showed enough commitment to the fight against corruption.

On the anti-graft war, it said the government was currently at a crossroads over the $43,449,947, £27,800 and N23,218,000 recovered at an apartment in Osborne Street, Ikoyi, Lagos last week.

“Government is at the crossroad as the Whistle-blower and the EFCC are now shying away from telling Nigerians who owned the monies because undeniable evidence links the monies to the proceeds from the sale of turbines by a former governor.

“The claim by the Director-General of the Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA) that the agency owns the stolen money found in a private residence is another bad comedy by this failed APC administration…

“The entire anti-corruption war of the APC since inception is just in the media with only one conviction. Many of the cases in courts have been set aside and suspects discharged and acquitted while others are in EFCC and DSS detention centres without trial against their fundamental human rights as enshrined in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“Nigerians may also recall the several allegations of corruption made against prominent APC members that the anti-graft agency has not attended to.  The chairman of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ibrahim Magu has been rejected twice by the Senate because of damning corruption allegations against him made by another agency of government .

“The same with the Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal and a host of other government officials against whom very serious allegations have been made. None of them have been subjected to the usual interrogations and investigation.”

The party added that the country was being fed the wrong narrative on the battle against insurgency in the North East, stating that Jonathan administration had already dealt a fatal blow to the Boko Haram insurgents before it left office on May 29, 2015.

“This breakthrough led to the successful dislodgment of the terrorist sect in the North-East before the March 28, 2015  Elections . Nigerians can testify to the gallant display by the Nigerian Armed Forces that allowed elections to take place in virtually all the wards and local government areas of Borno, Adamawa, Kebbi and Gombe states.

“The result of the election from these states gave President Buhari the edge in the presidential election. APC governors and officials who routinely condemn Jonathan’s anti-insurgency effort conveniently forgot that without the relative peace in those states at the time, there would have been no elections from which they could emerge as governors. But Nigerians have been fed continuously with the wrong narrative as if we have all slipped into collective amnesia that Jonathan was hopelessly ineffective against the insurgents.”

The truth of the matter was that the insurgents were on the back foot, in hasty retreat and with their backs to the wall by February – March of 2015. The then NSA, Col. Ibrahim Dasuki had requested that the elections be postponed by six weeks to enable the government launch a major offensive to push Boko Haram out of all the occupied territories . This offensive achieved its objective so much so that elections took place in all the LGAs of the North East.”