The Presidential Campaign of the All Progressives Congress on Sunday said the return of fuel queues at filling stations in Abuja and other parts of Nigeria is a confirmation that the policies of the Jonathan administration are founded on deceit and insincerity.
According to the APC campaign, it was now evident that the recent fuel price reductions announced by the Federal Government was borne out of political expediency, rather than compassion, because the ruling party is desperate to cling to power at all costs.
The APC campaign also condemned the gross reduction in the hours of electricity supply across the country by electricity providers describing it as sad reminders of the failure of the PDP Federal Government.
This was contained in a statement signed by the Director of Media and Publicity of the APC campaign, Malam Garba Shehu, in Abuja.
The APC wondered how a political party which has been in power for 16 years and which is unable to ensure regular fuel supply being an oil producing country and having privatised the power sector and given generous financial assistance to operators of the sector, can still feel confident to seek another term in office.
Shehu said that the glaring and inexcusable failure of the PDP government in these two important areas is a sign of gross ineptitude, maladministration and corruption which is responsible for the sorry economic state the average citizen of Nigeria has found themselves.
According to him, for the people of Nigeria to be again confronted with the specter of fuel scarcity so soon after the harrowing experience of last Christmas period shows that the Jonathan government can never get anything right as Nigeria will continue to be an embarrassment among the oil producing countries of the world.
The statement partly read: “The issue is that being unable to set up even one new refinery in the past five years and unable to get existing refineries to function up to 50 per cent capacity, the people of Nigeria surely need another set of people to be in charge of affairs.
“Those who man the two critical sectors of fuel and power are cronies of President Jonathan and supporters of the PDP that they have no reason to discharge their mandate in favour of the Nigerian people.
“We all remember the hype and fanfare with which the privatisation of the power sector was carried out and yet majority of Nigerians are having less electric power or none at all but are forced to pay outrageous electricity bills to the operators of the power companies who are either card-carrying members of the PDP or are close associates of President Jonathan.”
It further said to add insult to injury; the Jonathan government has also given billions of Naira to these operators under the guise of assisting them to improve power supply, without result. And this happened after the sector had been sold and the facilities handed over to these private operators.
The APC demanded that the Jonathan government and his party should explain to Nigerians the reason why fuel scarcity and blackout should persist, making life a hell for Nigerians, despite huge investments and policies put in place to eradicate these problems.
Reacting to the allegations, the Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Alhaji Abdullahi Jalo, said contrary to what the opposition party would want Nigerians to believe, the Jonathan-led PDP administration has achieved a lot in the areas in question.
He said, “If we are sincere with ourselves and we want to be fair to the Jonathan-led PDP administration, you will agree with me that he has done a lot in spite of various acts of sabotage and insurgency.
“You know that our electricity infrastructure has been down for so long and that more and more Nigerians are joining the national grid, there is bound to be challenges but they are being dealt with.
“On the issue of petroleum, the falling price of crude oil is not a problem for Nigeria only. Many oil producing countries are also facing it but Mr. President and his ministers are tackling the issue. The opposition will never see anything good in what government is doing.”
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