Barely 24 hours after it asked the opposition Peoples democratic Party (PDP) to seek deliverance from prayer warriors, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has again declared that has said the opposition party lacks the moral authority to query the regime of the President, Major General Mohammadu Buhari (retd.), over his decision to remove petrol subsidy and compare fuel prices between Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.
The APC in a statement issued Sunday by its Deputy National Publicity
Secretary, Yekini Nabena, said expressed shock that after several wastages by the party during its reign in power, adding that apart from the fact that the subsidy regime and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation have been transparent under the Buhari-led regime unlike what transpired under successive PDP administrations when the same NNPC owed the government up to the sum of N704 billion for gross violations of the subsidy scheme and was unaccountable to no one.
The statement read in part “Between 2006 and 2013, PDP governments spent over N5.42 trillion on subsidy, which was 15.57% higher than the 2014 national budget of N4.69 trillion.
“It was also under the PDP government that the number of fuel importers rose from 5 in 2006 to 10 in 2007, 19 in 2008 and spiked up to 140 in 2011. This was one of the biggest causes of corruption because many firms only existed on paper and collected subsidies on fuel that never existed.
“To make matters worse, 60 million barrels of oil valued was stolen under the watch of PDP controlled NNPC between 2009 and 2012. The NNPC during the PDP years also failed to remit US$20 billion in oil revenues owed to the nation, which was confirmed by PwC and Deloitte investigative reports.
“The PDP has no genuine reason to cry wolf or display moral authority over subsidy under the Buhari administration.“
Nabena described attacks on the President by the opposition party over his comparison between the pump price of petrol between Nigeria and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as naive.
