President Bola Tinubu’s remarks to Catholic Bishops on the improving security and economic situation in the country sparked backlash yesterday, with opposition parties challenging his claims and questioning the administration’s handling of pressing national problems.
African Democratic Congress (ADC) criticised Tinubu for vowing to “fight to the finish” politically, telling him to focus on fixing the country’s security crisis and defeating terrorists, rather than fighting the opposition.
National Publicity Secretary of ADC, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, who voiced the criticism, also said, at a different forum, that members of the party would not trust their votes with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during the coming elections.
That was as Allied People’s Movement (APM) described as illusory claims by the president to the Catholic Bishops that the economy and the security situation in the country had improved.
APM said such claims stood in sharp contrast to the harsh realities on the ground.
In a related development, former Vice President and presidential candidate of ADC, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, yesterday, described the latest revelation that the federal government exceeded its 2024 borrowing limit by N4.79 trillion, pushing fresh borrowing to N12.62 trillion, as further proof that the Tinubu administration had lost control of the country’s finances.
Equally, yesterday, the media office of the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Obi, accused the federal government and its political allies of deliberately diverting public attention from Nigeria’s worsening economic and security challenges by amplifying trivial controversies.
In a statement signed by Abdullahi, ADC slammed the president’s “fight to the finish” comments as a disturbing political obsession at a time when the country was grappling with worsening insecurity, including the recent attack on Naridon village in Kaduna State that claimed at least 30 lives.
SOURCE: By Chuks Okocha, Sunday Aborisade and Hammed Shittu in Ilorin/ ThisDay/AllAfrica