The All Progressives Congress, APC, says former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, ex-Minister Transport Rotimi Amaechi and the immediate past governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, are united by a desperate desire to return to power for personal gain.
This was contained in a statement by the spokesman for the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Felix Morka, on Monday in Abuja.
According to him, the three politicians, who made critical remarks about President Bola Tinubu’s economic policies during Amaechi’s 60th birthday lecture in Abuja on May 31, are simply “frustrated rent-seekers clinging to a fading political relevance”.
It will be recalled that while commenting on the state of the economy, Amaechi, who was the Speaker of the Rivers house of Assembly between 1999 and 2007 and also the two-term governor of the state from 2007 to 2015, said he is hungry.
“We’re all hungry; all of us are. If you’re not hungry, I am. For us, the opposition, if you want us to remove the man in power, we can remove him from this power,” Amaechi had said.
The APC National Publicity Secretary, in the statement, carpeted the politicians for blaming Tinubu for a problem they also failed to eradicate in almost 25 years their party was in control.
“The APC strongly rejects the baseless allegation that the APC government of President Bola Tinubu was ‘weaponising’ poverty by not eradicating the scourge in two years – a feat they themselves failed to achieve during a quarter of a century in power,” the statement read.
Morka said the birthday lecture was turned into a “frenzied” gathering of “displaced rent-seekers who misused their time in office and are now disoriented by Tinubu’s reforms”.
“These three individuals have occupied Nigeria’s highest political offices between 1999 and 2023. In all 24 years, the trio, individually or collectively, could not and did not eradicate poverty in their states or the country.
“They did not even attempt to address, let alone tackle, the structural challenges and distortions that stifled the economy and worsened poverty over the years,” he said.
The APC image maker also accused the trio of what he called mindless rent-seeking, selling national assets to cronies, wasteful spending, and sponsoring state violence.
Reacting to comments by the former minister of transportation, Morka said, “That’s about a quarter of a century of freeloading by Amaechi on state resources, with absolutely no record of attempting to combat poverty in his Rivers state or the country.
“When Amaechi declared, ‘I am hungry,’ he must mean, and must be understood to mean, that he is hungry and desperate to return to his felt entitled dependency on state resources and patronage.”
The APC scribe further stated that the former Rivers State governor’s complaint about hunger barely two years out of office underscores the depth of the self-serving motivations behind his criticism.
According to him, Nigerians can see through what he described as disruptive politicking from opposition figures, who he said are losing their grip on the economy.
The APC spokesman explained that Tinubu’s economic reforms have forced a departure from the rent-seeking model, replacing it with one that rewards hard work, productivity, and innovation.
He also blamed past administrations — especially the 16 years under the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, for failing to allow the naira to find its real value.
“The erstwhile, artificially overvalued naira stifled local production, encouraged import dependency, and exacerbated poverty.
“Atiku and Peter Obi, who are now vociferously criticising President Tinubu’s policies, amassed their wealth from the very import-dependent system they are desperately trying to preserve,” he said.
He reiterated that Atiku, a former customs officer, and Peter Obi, a successful importer, reaped enormous benefits from the old system.
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