The All Progressives Congress has replied Father Mbaka who reportedly criticized President Buhari for the economic hardship in Nigeria
Father Mbaka and President Buhari at Aso Rock
In a statement released by Kate Offor, the spokesperson of the Enugu State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the party has assured that President Muhammadu Buhari will not disappoint Nigerians in the task of fixing the country.
The party was reacting to
recent remarks about the president by popular Enugu Catholic priest, Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka, who in said life was no longer easy for Nigerians as there was hunger everywhere, adding that the economic hardship sweeping the country is as a result of what he defined as poor leadership under the Buhari-led government.
“It is not easy everywhere. Hunger is everywhere. Hunger is in the atmosphere. There is sword moving about in the country. People are dying like flies. The sword of hunger is eating the land,” the clergyman said.
But the APC said though it agreed with Fr. Mbaka, the president was committed to fixing the country.
“We wish to reassure Fr. Mbaka that President Buhari will not in the fullness of time disappoint Nigerians or fail to fix our dilapidated social and physical infrastructure. Never! Buhari is devotedly committed to pull Nigerians out of poverty, hunger and squalor,” it said.
The party however agreed with Mbaka that the past Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administrations should be blamed for Nigeria’s woes and that if they had done what was expected of them, the nation would not have been in its current situation.
“For us yesterday and for true reality is the architecture of today, and nobody can wash yesterday away. Therefore, Fr Mbaka is correct in stating that the past regimes sowed the whirlwind we are regrettably reaping today.
“If the $16 billion expended on power supply was prudently expended, if the 3 Greenfield Refineries awarded on 13 May, 2010 was not dead and fund decayed in the sand, if the $8.3 billion spent on the old gauge Lagos-Kano Railway were for standard gauge, if the Enugu-Onitsha, Enugu-Port Harcourt, 2nd Niger Bridge the and other federal roads monies budgeted were not eaten by locust, if the monies meant for Enugu Coal were nor embezzled and if the billions budgeted for our schools and hospitals did not grow wings; hunger couldn’t have been in the land, unemployment could have been drastically reduced and our prosperity could have been guaranteed.”
The APC said for the avoidance of doubt, its members and by extension Nigeria, feel the pains, pangs of hunger, gruesome hardship and abject poverty ravaging the land, adding that its members were not immune to hunger nor the gross unemployment dislocating of the country’s teeming youth.
“His solution is to effectively and prudently implement 2016 and subsequent budgets, so as to fix the decayed infrastructure.
“On the issue of being slow, Mr President pointed out that the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Procurement Act and other extant laws make it impossible for any official to expend monies not appropriated by the National Assembly. Otherwise, he could have dipped his hand into the trillions budgeted and hit the ground running.
“It is pertinent to inform as well that Mr President is embarking on economic diplomacy, travelling the length and breadth of the globe, utilizing his huge goodwill to attract foreign investors to fulfil the solemn pledge he made to the good people of Nigeria.
“It is common knowledge that destruction is very easy and reconstruction very difficult. This is the ordeal that Mr President is facing in fixing Nigeria.”