UPDATED: FG accuses Atiku of economic blueprint theft

UPDATED: FG accuses Atiku of economic blueprint theft

Minister of Information and Communication, Lai Mohammed, has said that the economic blueprint laid out by the presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, was copied.

Speaking at a press conference held at the National Press Centre in Abuja on Thursday, the Minister said the former Vice President’s blueprint was a “crude attempt” at copying the Buhari-led administration.

He said, “Last week, the Presidential Candidate of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, spoke on his economic blueprint at an event in Lagos.

“Let me say straight away, that the so-called blueprint is a crude attempt at copying all that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has done, especially in the areas of job creation, infrastructure, financing, relationship with the private sector, poverty reduction, debt management and the overall management of the economy”.

Mohammed described it as shocking, that the opposition party, which had constantly condemned the activities of the present administration, would base its blueprint on the things being done by the administration.

On the issue of infrastructure financing, Mohammed said the Buhari administration had broken the jinx, by leveraging on innovative schemes such as the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund, which is being used in financing infrastructure projects across the country.

Touching on power, he said Siemens’ partnership with the Federal Government under, the Presidential Power Initiative was the most ambitious project in the power sector, adding that the three-phase partnership project was to deliver 7,000MW in the first phase, 11,000MW in the second phase and 25,000MW in the third phase.

He described the former vice president’s pronouncement that the future of the country’s economy was ‘bleak’ as sheer scaremongering, noting that the economy, under the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), had recovered from two recessions, in the space of five years, between 2016-2020. He added that the economy, economy had sustained its recovery from the 2020 recession for the 7th consecutive quarter, growing by 3.54% in real terms in Q2 2022, from 3.11% in Q1 2022.

Mohammed concluded that Atiku’s blueprint, was only a reel of what the administration had been doing since it came in in 2015, adding that copying the blueprint was an attestation of the achievements of the Buhari-led administration.

“Let me say that I am not really surprised that His Excellency, the former Vice President only reeled out, in his so-called Economic Blueprint, what we have been doing in the past seven years. That’s what you get from someone who leaves the country after losing an election, only to parachute into town when another election is due. It is a measure of how much this Administration has achieved in all sectors and the best the opposition could do is to seek to copy what the Administration has been doing.

“For the record, there is nothing we have said today on the achievements of this Administration that we haven’t said before. No amount of deceit, misrepresentation, scaremongering, distortion of facts or derogation can subtract from the visible achievements of the Buhari Administration”.

He further said that all of the administration’s successes and achievements should not be denigrated by the opposition party, whom he said lacked originality and was aping at a government it had once derided.