AGENDA TO SAVE NIGERIA: To hell with APC blueprint– Presidency By Soni Daniel, Regional Editor, North ABUJA — Barely 72 hours after former Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, chastised President Goodluck Jonathan administration’s poor leadership, the Presidency, yesterday, fired back at him, describing his economic blueprint for Nigeria’s growth as obsolete and incapable of salvaging any economy. Besides, the Presidency accused Tinubu of always playing to the gallery for cheappolitical gains without adding value to the people in anyway. The ACN leader had on Monday addressed the House of Commons in London, during which he highlighted major political and economic challenges facing the country; in a lecture he called “Leadership, National Development and the People”. Apart from describing Jonathan’s administration as lacking the needed capacity to move the nation forward, theAPC chieftain also accused the government of taking Nigeria backwards. Tinubu and democracy The Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to President Jonathan, Dr. Doyin Okupe, in his reaction, yesterday, described Tinubu as an autocratic leader,lacking in democratic credentials to talk about leadership and good governance. Okupe noted with dismay the claim by the former governor that the Jonathan administration was drawing the country backwards, boasting that the current leadership had done more than any other in Nigeria’s near 53 years of nationhood. The SSA also described Tinubu’s economic blueprint, “Third Path” as moribund and incapable of taking any country forward and accused him of trying to delve into an area he has little or no knowledge about. Okupe dismissed as verbose and lacking in statistical support, Tinubu’s recommendation that no large nation has ever attained growth without government running deficit budget to build required infrastructure. The Presidential aide noted: “It is clear from Tinubu’s paper that the ACN chieftain and his party lack a fundamental understanding of both democratic norms and sound economic judgment. “Tinubu’s Third Path blueprint for economic transformation is nothing but a hollow ideological concept. As the ACN national leader has failed to realize, the world has moved away from ideologies in favour of pragmatic and result-oriented policies, which impact meaningfully on the lives of the people. “Nations like Russia and China, which spearheaded Communism, one of the great ideological movements of the 20th century, have since embraced market reforms, and states in the western hemisphere have also dumped pure capitalism for more people-oriented policies with less dogmas and economic clichés. “We are sorry to say that the so-called “Third Path” is a clueless path to socio-economic abyss as it remains essentially a theoretical proposition with no evidence of success either in history or contemporary climes,” Okupe said. Tinubu not a patriot— Okupe The presidential aide also condemned the ACN chieftain for trying to portray himself as a patriot, noting that his actions and utterances were skewed and not in sync with actions of patriots around the world. “This is why we regrettably disagree with Senator Tinubu’s labelling of himselfas a patriot. As everyone well knows, patriots are concerned with the image, the well-being and survival of their countries and will do everything in their power to protect same even if they have political differences with their home governments. They do not condone terrorism neither do they travel around the world denigrating their country,” he added. He pointed out that the former governor had no justification to criticise the rising wave of insecurity in parts of the North, having opposed the recent declaration of state of emergency by the Presidency to checkmate terrorism in the region. Okupe said the country would have beenconsumed by terrorism if Nigerians wereto follow the advice of the ACN leader and his CPC counterpart, who all asked the National Assembly to reject the imposition of a state of emergency in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno states. Asking Nigerians to ignore the former governor’s undemocratic antics, Okupe stated that Jonathan had done his best to provide the nation with the needed people-oriented leadership based on therule of law. He said: “As any keen and discerning observer of Nigeria’s democracy will attest, Senator Tinubu and his ACN are completely lacking in democratic temper.The ACN as a party is not only undemocratic but blatantly autocratic and makes no pretences about it. “We recall that only recently, its National Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande, haughtily asserted that whosoever is not pleased with the national leadership of the party’s way of running the ACN and picking its candidates was free to leave the party.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:15:19 +0000
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