By Chuks Okocha
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday lamented that the unabating misrule of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration and the All Progressives Congress (APC) pushed Twitter to take its African Headquarters to Ghana instead of Nigeria.
This, the party said was despite the fact that Nigeria had far more twitter traffic and more business prospects than Ghana.
The PDP said that Twitter’s preference for Ghana over Nigeria was occasioned by inconsistent economic policies, obnoxious suppression of free speech, stifling of online freedom and open internet by the Buhari’s administration and the APC.
According to a statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, “this is in addition to infrastructural decay, massive corruption and manifest failure of the presidency and the APC to address the escalated insecurity brought upon our nation by their incompetent watch.
“Indeed the decision by Twitter to by-pass Nigeria to locate its African operational base in Ghana is another sad commentary of how our nation, which was hitherto a global investment hub under the PDP, has now been so degraded in global economic competitiveness under the APC.”
PDP said that Nigerians were heavily despaired on Monday when the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, announced that his company would be setting up its headquarters on the continent in Ghana despite Nigeria’s domineering twitter traffic in the sub region.
The PDP spokesperson said that: “With an estimated 39.6 million twitter subscribers in Nigeria, which is bigger than the population of Ghana, Nigeria ought to be the destination, but for the anti-people policies of the APC administration.
“It is sad that our nation has continued to lose huge foreign direct investments, which would have brought in more economic opportunities, especially for our youths, just because the presidency and the APC lacked the capacity to deliver on good governance.”
The party explained that the preference by Twitter for Ghana over Nigeria had further demonstrated that the Buhari’s administration’s claims on ease of doing business in Nigeria were mere media hypes.
The PDP said, “If President Buhari and the APC have the interest of the struggling youth demography of our nation at heart, they ought to have taken the necessary proactive steps to ensure that Twitter brought this huge investment to Nigeria, particularly given that we have the highest number of Twitter users on the continent.
“It is indeed disturbing that the Buhari’s administration is taking no decisive steps to address the worsening situation in our country, which has become the world poverty capital under their watch.”
The party explained that the incompetence, insensitivity, corruption and laid-back attitude of the Buhari’s administration have continued to bring woes to the nation with an escalated 33 per cent unemployment rate, closure of over 40 million hitherto vibrant businesses with millions of families now unable to afford the basic necessities of life.
Accordingly, the PDP said that it was painful that despite the national potentials, the administration had not shown the required commitment of engaging foreign investors and captains of industries to attract investments as being done by Presidents of other countries.
The party expressed worries over the accumulation of foreign loans, stating that, “Instead, the Buhari’s Presidency is only interested in accumulating foreign loans and mortgaging the future of our nation.”
