The New Nigeria Initiative (NNI) has said Nigerians are still suffering from the rot of 16 years of misgovernance of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which is planning to come back and regain power in 2019.
Idoko Ainoko, Chairman of NNI, stated this while addressing journalists over the state of affairs of the country ahead of next year’s general election.
Ainoko noted that the duo of the former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who both ruled on platform of the PDP, caused the problems currently bedeviling the country’s economy.
He said that Nigerians must shine their eyes and reject the dark days of the PDP, noting that the event leading to the general election will be a hot race.
“By the time the party, PDP, was done after spending 16 continuous years in power, our country was left with degraded infrastructure, poorly motivated and poorly equipped military, a dwindled federal reserve, poor health-care system, abysmal educational system, and epileptic power supply,” he said.
“Almost all sectors of the Nigerian architecture were in shambles and the fascinating thing is that those 16 years were the moment when the country made unprecedented record revenue from oil sales.
“Waziri Adio, the Executive Secretary of Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative NEITI, had said Nigeria earned $592 billion from oil and gas sales alone within that period yet the lives of the people were not any better than prior to 1999.
“The figure quoted will definitely be in excess of $600 billion if we consider what accrued in the first quarter of 2015 as well. These are humongous figures that exceeded what we made altogether as a nation in the years preceding 1999 and those years were our golden years.
“Those were the years when our universities were rated higher than many American Universities and when we had railways functioning almost across all geopolitical regions of the country. We had manufacturing industries littered across the country.
“By 2015, we had become a shadow of ourselves as a country. Refineries collapsed, schools and hospitals were operating far below the standard of what is expected of a developing nation.
“Power supply was below 3,000 megawatts, despite claims that over $16b had been expended in the 1999-2015 period on the power sector. We were low on almost all development indices. It was definitely a 16 years of colossal failure.”
Whilst acknowledging the right of the former Vice President to seek political office, Aidoko said it would be sheer evil to ask the people to vote for those who, for 16 years, manipulated all the processes of government and converted same into their own personal good.
