•Restates call on Senate to reject Onochie’s nomination for INEC job
Chuks Okocha
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has criticised President Muhammadu Buhari for the increasing rate of poverty in the country, following a report by the World Bank.
The party has also threatened to file a lawsuit against the Senate President, Dr. Ahmad Lawan, if the Senate fails to reject the nomination of presidential aide, Ms. Lauretta Onochie, as a national commissioner in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The World Bank, in a report released on Tuesday, had stated that inflation pushed about seven million Nigerians below the poverty line in 2020.
Its position contradicted that of Buhari, who in a broadcast on Saturday to mark Democracy Day had said that his administration had lifted 10.5 million people out of poverty in two years.
But the PDP, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, blamed the All Progressives Congress-led administration for the inflation.
It called on the president to work on the economy “before every Nigerian is turned into a street beggar.”
The party added: “It indeed appears that Mr. President enjoys living in denial while watching millions of Nigerians go down in abject poverty, excruciating hunger and starvation as our country now ranks 98th out of 107 in Global Hunger Index under his watch.
“Under President Buhari, Nigerians are now subjected to the worst form of poverty and hardship, with collapsed purchasing power, occasioned by a voodoo economy management that has wrecked our productive sectors and pummeled our naira from the about N167 to a US dollar in 2015 to the current over N500 per dollar
“It is unfortunate that Mr. President will choose to always bandy fictitious figures and false performance claims, when he has, in a space of six years, destroyed our national productivity and reduced our country to a beggarly nation, a laughing stock and object of pity among the comity of nations.”
The PDP also threatened to sue Lawan, if he fails to return the nomination of Onochie as a national commissioner in INEC to the president.
The party said: “Lawan will have nobody but himself to blame for the ridiculing of his tenure in office if he failed to return the nomination as demanded by Nigerians.”
The PDP also tasked the Chairman, Senate Committee on INEC, Senator Kabiru Gaya, not to partake in the plot to confirm Onochie despite the outcry against her nomination.
The party, in another statement by Ologbondiyan, charged Gaya to stand down deliberations concerning Onochie before his committee.
“Senator Lawan must know that Nigerians are now holding him directly answerable for gross misconduct and impeachable act of perfidy for sending Onochie’s already rejected nomination to the Gaya’s committee, in utter violation of the provisions of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and total derision for the sensibility of Nigerians.
“Our party reminds Senator Lawan that the reasons that forced his hands to stand down Onochie’s faulted nomination eight months ago have neither changed nor abated. The reasons are still sticking and they are not far-fetched
“In case Lawan needs to be reminded, paragraph 14 of the 3rd schedule of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) forbids a person involved in partisan politics to hold office as a member of INEC.
“Relying on the above in demanding for a litmus of respect for the supremacy of 1999 Constitution, the PDP holds that Onochie, as a card-carrying member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) from Ward 5 Onicha Olona, Aniocha North Local Government Area of Delta State, and who is also a public campaigner for the APC and President Buhari, cannot, by any stroke of imagination, be appointed as an INEC official at any level and under any guise whatsoever.
“If anything, our party assures Senator Lawan that his desperation to appoint Onochie into INEC through the backdoor is an act of rebelliousness to 1999 Constitution as well as impudence to the sensibilities of Nigerians, which must never be allowed to stand,” it added.
PDP directed its members and other democratically-minded members of the National Assembly, across party lines, to reject Onochie’s confirmation.
