Nigeria Newspapers Online

The Presidency has knocked former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar over his attack on the economic reforms of the present administration, saying his alternative ideas were rejected by Nigerians at the polls.

Atiku had attacked President Bola Tinubu for the prevailing hardship in the country, accusing him of “trial and error” economic polices.

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But reacting to the development, Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, said “Alhaji Atiku’s ideas, which lacked details, were rejected by Nigerians in the 2023 poll.”

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The Presidency also said “If he (Atiku) had won the election, we believe he would have plunged Nigeria into a worse situation or run a regime of cronyism.”

Onanuga also said Atiku lost the election partly because he “vowed to sell the NNPC and other assets to his friends. Nigerians have not forgotten this, nor would they be comforted by Atiku’s antecedents when he ran the economy in the first term of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government between 1999 and 2003.

“As vice president, Atiku supervised a questionable privatisation programme. He and his boss demonstrated a lack of faith in our educational system, and both went to establish their universities while they allowed ours to flounder.”

The presidential aide who described the present difficulties as temporary said, “Despite the futile attempt to hoodwink Nigerians again in his statement, it is gratifying that the former Vice President could not repudiate the economic reforms pursued by the Tinubu administration because they are the right things to do.

“His advocacy for a gradualist approach only showed that he was not in tune with the enormity of problems inherited by President Tinubu. It is so easy to paint a flowery to-do list. It is expected of an election loser.

” President Tinubu met a country facing several grave challenges. Fuel subsidies were siphoning away enormous resources we could ill afford, and there was criminal arbitrage in the forex market. No leader worth his name will allow these two economic disorders to persist without moving to end them surgically.

“While advocating for gradual reforms may sound appealing, Tinubu took measures that should have been taken decades ago by Alhaji Abubakar and his boss when they had the opportunity.”