The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Wednesday punctured the claim by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led federal government that oil price hovered at $100 per barrel in the 16 years of PDP’s rule, saying it was only sold for that price in two years of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.
Besides,
he said his former boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo inherited a crude
oil price of $11 per barrel yet took Nigeria out of recession, cleared
the country’s foreign debts and grew the economy by six percent.
He
stated this while delivering the quarterly business lecture of Lagos
Island Club where he spoke on “My vision to get Nigeria working again”,
saying the current structure of the country is not working.
He
said for Nigeria to develop into a united, prosperous and secure nation,
it must adopt a new economic management model and a new political
structure “that will cure all the federating units of their addiction to
oil revenues”.
Atiku said the present administration came into
power and took Nigeria to recession while drawing back the economic
gains of the previous administrations under the PDP.
He said
though the country is blessed with the human resources to make quantum
leap from a third world nation to a developed country, the last four
years had witnessed deterioration in all aspects of human development.
According
to him, “unemployment has unfortunately been our only booming industry
with over 13 million people joining the ranks of people without a job,
which now totals 21 million.”
He said the actions and inactions
of government had weakened investors’ confidence in Nigerian economy,
noting that Ghana with a population of 13 million people attracted more
Foreign Direct Investments (FDI).
“In order to reverse the trend,
our economic policy would be more coherent, consistent and therefore
more predictable by the business community. Nothing could be more
threatening to investment flows than an environment that is full of
policy flip-flops”, he said.
He reiterated that if elected, he
would run a private sector-driven government towards enhancing the
capacity of private businesses to create jobs.
According to him,
unlike during Obasanjo’s presidency when there used to be regular
meetings with Chief Executive Officers of major companies, nothing of
such is presently happening.
He lamented that there is no council of privatization in place, saying it stopped during Jonathan’s administration.
“The
AtikuPlan recognizes the private sector as the engine of growth of our
economy. A strong, productive and pro-growth private sector is needed to
create wealth, generate employment opportunities and help fight
poverty.
“We pledge to improve government consultations with the
private sector in policy design and policy implementation. We will work
with the Organized Private Sector to identify ways to reduce the cost of
borrowing, tackle incidences of multiple taxations and improve
availability of foreign exchange for legitimate production input
purchases”.
Source:- Dailytrustng
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