PDP Still Has Questions To Answer Over Nigeria’s Squandered Wealth – President Buhari Says During Meeting With NLC Leaders

PDP Still Has Questions To Answer Over Nigeria’s Squandered Wealth – President Buhari Says During Meeting With NLC Leaders

Once again, President Buhari has said the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) still owes Nigerians explanation on how it expended the humongous
resources that accrued to the country from oil sales between 1999 and
2014.

Receiving the leadership of organized labour which came to felicitate
with him on his electoral victory at State House, Abuja, Thursday, the
President said the current administration met a country with dilapidated
infrastructure all round in 2015, and it calls to serious question what
the party that was in power for 16 years did with the country’s
earnings from oil, which reached a peak during the period.

“PDP has not successfully explained to the country what they did with
the money,” President Buhari said. “There were no roads, no rail, no
power. They said they spent $16 billion on power, but where is the
power? The irresponsible expenditure of that period has not been
explained, and Nigerians deserve an answer on that terrible
mismanagement of the country.”

The President thanked organized labour “for the support and
patriotism you have shown during the presidential election, especially
after the unexpected postponement. You and your members stepped in to
support willing Nigerians to exercise their civic and patriotic rights
to vote. You intervened as patriots, and not for political, religious or
tribal purposes. You simply did the right thing during a difficult
period for many of us.”

On what Nigerians can look forward to in the next lap of the journey,
President Buhari said he would continue pushing the Change Agenda, “and
remain focused on our core pillars of security, economy, and fight
against corruption.” He urged organized labour to partner with the
government to make the country peaceful, prosperous, and corruption
free.

In his remarks, President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC),
Comrade Ayuba Wabba, lauded the President for being worker-friendly, as
exemplified in the granting of bailout funds to state governments to pay
backlog of salaries and pensions.

Said the NLC President:

“We all remember the special bailout and budget support you
introduced to support state governments during the recession. Your
directive during this intervention was that state governments must
offset accumulated arrears of salaries and pension liabilities. I
remember you publicly asked state governors, ‘how do you manage to sleep
at night when the salaries of workers in your state are not paid?’

“For us, that was one of the finest moments we have had with any
President in this country…I can stand here today and say your
intervention was the difference between life and death for many
workers.”

The labour leader appealed to the National Assembly to earnestly pass
the National Minimum Wage Act, while also asking the President to
thereafter sign it into law within the shortest possible time.

Organized labour pledged to remain “veritable partner in progress
with government,” counseling the President to continue to “make the
Nigerian people, especially the poor, the centre-piece of your policy
initiatives and actions.”