L
LequteMan
Guest
The chairman of the new Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje, has unequivocally condemned the rape of the country’s economy by the Goodluck Ebele Jonathan administration.
According to Sahara reporters he said the Nigerian economy has been run aground and is now comatose.
The accusations came in a statement issued by the faction in Abuja, and signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Chukwuemeka Eze.
It drew attention to the massive scale of officially-induced oil theft, the dwindling returns from oil and massive looting going on at the federal level as evidence that Nigeria is on the brink of economic collapse.
"One manifestation of this is the Federal Government’s inability to pay states their share of the Federal Allocation since July. The last time that states were paid was for part of July.”
He said FG is currently owing the 36 states N336 billion since July and as a result the states have become impoverished and unable to meet up with basic obligations.
"If states cannot pay their workers because there is no money to pay them, what could result is a huge social catastrophe that will add to the social, economic and political inferno already ravaging Nigeria today.
"Ironically, while the masses suffer, Government officials continue to feed fat, using various guises to fritter away our common patrimony,”
"Where has all the money gone? For an instance, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had revealed that the country earned a total of N1.05 trillion in July, but surprisingly, the Minister had not been able to pay states their due statutory allocations. Where are the billions of dollars accruable from daily crude oil sales?
"All these portend very grave danger for our dear country as youth and labour restiveness appears imminent.”
The party said the deterioration in the unemployment situation is inevitable if FG continues with the present shoddy management of the economy.
"The truth is that Nigeria is broke and that worse days are ahead under this inept and visionless Administration."