TELL Magazine

Accuses APC of Mismanagement of Economy.

Edo State governor, Godwin Obaseki, on Tuesday boasted that only the PDP that can help the President, Muhammadu Buhari, solve the major problem confronting it, and not his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC. Obaseki, who blamed insecurity in the country on the “lawlessness and indiscipline” of the ruling party, lampooned the APC for bringing the country to its knees by its mismanagement of the economy.

Speaking on Tuesday when he received the leadership of the South-South Zonal Working Committee of his Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, led by its National Vice Chairman, Dan Osi Orbih, posited that “The way the ruling party has managed and mismanaged the economy of this country is the reason why we are having the level of insecurity that we are faced with today. The lawlessness, indiscipline, by the ruling party has brought us to where we are”.
According to him, “The challenges of insecurity just show the dysfunctionality of our federal system. We should not lose hope in Nigeria but focus on how to create confidence to give our people hope by managing the country well”.

Recall that Obaseki ruffled feathers in the polity three weeks ago when he raised the alarm that nation’s economy was in trouble such that the federal government had to print between N50 and N60 billion to augment FAAC for March 2021,

Slamming the country’s lopsided Federation, Obaseki wondered why security should be on the exclusive legislative list to the detriment of the remaining two tiers of government.

According to him, “We run a Federation; we have three tiers of government: Federal, State and Local Governments.  Why should security be exclusive to the federal level? What happened to the other two? Until we address that structural imbalance, we are not going to be able to deal with security at its core”.
The governor asserted that only the PDP has the capacity to rescue the nation from its current appalling security challenges, and called on the South-south geo-political zone to rise up and defend itself in all spheres.
“The country has a major problem and it’s only the PDP that can help the President solve the problem, but not his party. Let us, as party men and Nigerians, help rescue the nation and call on those that have the capacity to rescue Nigeria. Security is local and we can rescue this nation; that is why Edo is relatively peaceful.

“In the South-South, we must stand up to defend ourselves economically, politically and security wise. We have pretenders in the region who try to exploit the region and we must stop them.

“When you concentrate resources at the centre, you can’t get results. The security structure that we have in Nigeria has expired; we need a new security arrangement. The system that we operated till now is not tenable,” he noted.

Governor Obaseki encouraged Nigerians not to lose hope in the country amid the challenges facing the country, but to work collectively to ensure a better Nigeria.
Speaking earlier, Orbih noted that “The Southwest and Southeast have both formed a security network to protect their people. As South-South, we need to look for a way to check insecurity and protect our people in the region”.
The immediate past Edo State chairman of the PDP appealed to the governor “to lead the stand for state policing. It’s time to rejig the security architecture of Nigeria. We urge you to lend your voice to the struggle to make the country safe for all”.