Enugu APC Chairman Mocks PDP Over Pledge To Rescue Nigeria

Posted by African Examiner Enugu, Featured, Latest Headlines, News Across Nigeria, News From The State Sunday, October 31st, 2021

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The newly elected Chairman of Enugu State Chapter of All Progressive Congress (APC), Comrade Adolphus Ude, has mocked the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over its pledge to rescue Nigeria.

Ude, said before rescuing Nigeria, PDP should first account for the uncountable underdevelopment obstacles the party is embedded in the system, prior to their exit from power in 2015.

The Enugu APC boss, in a press statement made available to African Examiner in Enugu, said he closely observed the PDP convention which was held on Saturday at the Eagle Square Abuja where speaker after speaker ridiculed the APC and claimed that they want to rescue Nigeria.

Ude, blamed the current socio-economic challenges confronting Nigeria under the APC government on PDP’s 16 years of misrule.

“is it not better, PDP starts by first accounting for uncountable underdevelopment obstacles they embedded in the system before their exit in 2015?

” PDP acted like tenant who wrote favourable contract agreement for itself against Nigeria.

“Take the power sector for instance where the contract agreement between Federal Government and DisCos and GenCos are in favour of the private companies.

According to him, “PDP weaved these skewed contract agreements and in fact nominated those less efficient companies.”

Comrade Ude noted that in democracy, President Buhari cannot just wake up and cancel the contracts, stressing that it takes time to unbundle the less than transparent clauses in the contract.

“The outcome is gross unemployment and waste of public funds, as the Federal Government was compelled to invest over N1 trillions to patch up.

“According to IMF, Nigeria yearly loses $29 billion, which is 5.8% of her GDP, due to lack of reliable power supply.

And listen to the President of African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, who blamed poor electricity value chain sector for the sorry state of our industrial development.”

On why it is taking the Federal Government led by APC six years to untangle the mess, Udeh explained that democracy has its own speed, due process ,checks and balances.

He maintained that Mr. President cannot wake up one morning and revoke contract agreements no matter how faulty, otherwise, the media would accuse him of dictatorship and blame him for scaring off foreign investors.

The Chairman, however said they were happy that the Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, an engineer, has an answer to the intractable problem in the electricity value chain.

Quoted profusely the Power Minister, Ude said, “It must be clearly stated that within this value chain, some responsibilities are by virtue of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSRA) performed by our private sector partners and other agencies of government.

“These partners are being monitored and sometimes given the needed nudge in the right direction to achieve our objectives. We shall be taking a careful and detailed look at issues of policy, capacity and the technical requirement, among other things.

“One very critical concern that we must address in this performance monitoring process is to find out if the terms for granting the licenses were onerous.”

Ude, added that they were not talking of budgeted and abandoned federal roads, hospitals, universities and the celebrated N23 billion unaccounted three Green Field Refineries that the PDP announced in 2010, which could have saved over N5 trillion for Nigeria, had it been completed.

“And this was happening when oil was sold an average of $100 per barrel and Nigeria had then over $40 billion Excess Crude Account.”