The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said Tuesday that the President Muhammadu Buhari’s approval of the release of N804 billion as bailout to states and local governments has made a clear lie his highly reported assertion that he met an empty treasury.
PDP said that the money mustered by the president shows clearly that Goodluck Jonathan did not hand over an empty treasury.
Buhari had about a fortnight ago lambasted the outgone administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, alleging that he handed over“virtually empty treasury”.
The president had urged the media to report the true situation of things so that Nigerians will know the true position of things so that they would not blame him for the sordid state of the economy.
Buhari administration on Monday announced a bailout plan for the states, includes sharing of the $2.1 billion dividend paid to the Federation Account by the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Company (NLNG); a Central Bank-packaged special intervention fund that will offer financing to the states, ranging from N250 billion to N300 billion.
Under the package, the state’s will also benefit from a debt relief programme designed by the Debt Management Office which will help states restructure their commercial loans currently put at over N660 billion, and extend the life span of such loans while reducing their debt-servicing expenditures.
According to PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, “This development is in clear contradiction to the earlier impression given by President Buhari to Nigerians and the international community that they should not expect much from his administration in its first 100 days because according him, upon assumption of office, he met a virtually empty treasury.”
Metuh, who made the party’s position known in a statement on Tuesday, said further, “We want to believe that given the president’s release of such huge amount, he may have realised that he was earlier misdirected on the actual financial state of the nation at the time he took over. In this regard, we expect the president, as a respected statesman, to do the needful to correct that erroneous impression.
“Furthermore, we expect President Buhari’s APC administration, as direct beneficiary of this savings initiated by past PDP administrations, to appreciate the strategic importance of always saving for a rainy and as such guarantee prudent and transparent management of the nation’s resources now under its care.”
The party charged the APC, as a party in government, to “put its house in order, desist from injecting confusion and distracting the president from settling down to form a government and face the enormous challenges of governance, especially the implementation of his long list of campaign promises to Nigerians”.
It said that Nigerians are no longer interested in insults, tirades and propaganda, but in actions and policies that will move the nation forward.
The president’s largesse to the states were announced by Ahmed Idris, account-general of the federation, who said that the federal government and the 36 state governors had agreed to share $1.7 billion from the Excess Crude Account (ECA).
For the PDP, the bailout plans announced by the federal government could never have been possible if the treasury was indeed virtually empty.
It anchored its position on the fact that a significant amount of the bailout came from savings accumulated in the Excess Crude Account handed over to the Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC)’s administration by the past PDP-led administration.
