President’s US Trip Fruitless- PDP

Omg.. PDP is still very much at it with APC and shamefully
we must say we love the ‘fight’. Lol. Please read what the party has to say
about the president’s visit to the US. Culled from Punch;

Precisely 59 days after President Muhammadu Buhari assumed
power, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party on Sunday listed many ‘sins’ the
Federal Government under the President had committed and said Buhari’s
government lacked direction.

Among the sins of the Buhari’s government, the PDP said,
included alleged failure by the President to achieve anything meaningful during
his just-concluded US trip and alleged maltreatment of Patience, wife of
ex-President Goodluck Jonathan.

At a media briefing in Abuja on Sunday, the PDP’s National
Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, said events after Buhari’s visit to the US
indicated that neither the President nor his party, the All Progressives
Congress, had learnt anything from the trip.

Metuh said, “Now that the visit has come and gone, our fear
is that nothing whatsoever has been learnt or gained.

“What we continue to receive as a nation have been
embarrassing disagreements, accusations and counter-accusations, blames and
denials on very important issues due to lack of tact and skill in the
management of state matters by the APC-led administration.

“It is disheartening that rather than secure any sort of
tangible gain for the fight against terrorism, which has lost steam under the
APC watch, with insurgents, who were pushed to the verge of surrender by the
Goodluck Jonathan administration, now surging back and spreading into the
country, we get nothing but exchanges and disagreements between the Presidency
and their American hosts.

“This is not only embarrassing but also a worrisome
indication of crass ineptitude in the handling of international affairs on the
part of the present administration.”

He urged the government to settle down and face the business
of governance and the fight against insurgency with every sense of seriousness,
especially given Buhari’s promise in his April 2, 2015 CNN interview to end the
scourge two months after his inauguration.

Reacting, the All Progressives Congress, said that the PDP
would be unable to provide any worthwhile opposition to the Federal Government
if its spokesman continued to issue empty statements.

‘’Today’s statement is the most tortuous yet by the PDP and,
honestly, sounds more like a compendium of beer parlour gossips and side talks
than a serious criticism of a sitting government,’’ the APC said in a statement
issued in Lagos on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai
Mohammed.

‘‘To be in opposition does not mean you have to constitute
yourself to a nuisance by rushing to the press with all sorts of hot air
statements. It is the quality, rather than the frequency, of your interventions
that makes you relevant as an opposition in a democracy,’’ the party said

Metuh meanwhile also criticised the statement made by the
President while in the USA, in which he was quoted as saying that he would
administer the country on the basis of the voting pattern in the last general
elections.

He also said that the business community in Nigeria and
across the world noted what he described as the disgraceful treatment allegedly
meted out to some Nigerian bankers and captains of industries by Buhari during
his US visit.

While agreeing that the President has the right to decide
those to be on his entourage on such an important official visit, he
nevertheless said that the way Buhari allegedly shamed and walked out Nigerian
businessmen had sent a wrong signal to international investors and posed great
threats to inflow of direct foreign investments into the country.

“These Nigerian businessmen were rejected by their President
only for them to be valued by other Presidents of African nations who led them
into a meeting with President Barrack Obama in their own countries on account
of their investments in those nations,” he added.

Metuh also said that his party noted the alleged
embarrassment caused by the absence of an economic team for healthy and
informed discussion at the meeting with officials of the US government.

He said that whereas President Obama came to the meeting
with a formidable team of experts and key federal officials, President Buhari
had in his entourage some APC governors, who, he said, owe salaries and
billions of naira in debts.

This action, he said, robbed the nation the benefits and
gains of the discussions.

Metuh said that since the President had insisted on running
his government as a sole administrator, making important decisions on national
affairs without recourse to relevant statutory arms and organs of government,
the PDP was being compelled to demand that the administration publish its
expenses since assumption of office in May, in keeping with its much harped
stance on transparency.

“We make this demand because since the APC took office, the
nation’s financial system in the absence of statutory functionaries has been
enmeshed in confusion, controversy and fertile atmosphere for financial
sleazes,” he added.

Metuh also alleged that his party was in possession of
information that the Presidency acting alone, has gone into discussions with
the World Bank for a loan of $2.1 bn for purposes unknown to Nigerians.

He asked, “What is the loan for? What are the terms and who
are those working the papers? Who are the people to decide on how the money
will be spent? Is it true that the $2.1bn loan is meant to pay back huge
contributions for the APC Presidential campaign expenses?

“If truly this government is transparent, it should come out
clear on this loan as well as publicise details of its expenditure in the last
two months.”

The opposition party’s spokesperson also condemned what he
called the recent humiliation of Patience Jonathan at the Port Harcourt
airport, where he said the ex-President’s wife was refused access to the
protocol lounge based on “an order from Abuja”.

He said this was not the case when Jonathan was in power,
during which he said all former Presidents and their spouses had unhindered
access to the protocol lounge.

Metuh refused to take questions after the briefing.