The All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Government has overstretched the limits of Nigerians by politicizing the frightening unemployment level under its watch, the Nigerian main opposition party said on Sunday.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in a statement described the APC as an automated lying machine for “attempting to distort and muffle facts on unemployment that are already in the public domain.
APC, the PDP said has never been interested in the welfare of Nigerians. The party in the statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, came short of predicting an end of the road for the APC, saying “the ruling party has completed the trappings of a dying party and leaves no one in doubt that it has always been a power-grabbing special purpose vehicle that has now come to the end of its journey.”
The statement read: “It is shameful that in its attempt to deny that the number of unemployment persons and job losses across the formal and informal sectors had surge under its administration, the APC forgot that the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige, had earlier disclosed that unemployment rate was at a frightening 23.1 percent while raising alarm that the rate will hit a devastating 33.5 percent in 2020
“The APC also forgot that the minister, while declaring open a two-day workshop on high unemployment rate earlier in the year, reportedly described the situation as scary and further alerted that apart from the swelling unemployment rate, underemployment had also surged to 16.6 percent.
“The APC also chose not to remember that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in an earlier report, stated that 16 million Nigerians (which has now risen to 18 million) were unemployed, 18 million more were underemployed while another 27.44 million, reportedly refused to work in 2016 for various reasons not unrelated to frustration in the polity under the APC administration.
“It is completely unpardonable that rather than accepting the truth and seeking for a solution to the looming unemployment Armageddon, the APC seeks to trivialize and politicize a serious national problem.
“Such crass irresponsibility was never exhibited and could never have been allowed under a PDP-controlled federal government. “It is indeed shameful that at a time well-meaning Nigerians are worried about the situation and seeking for solutions, the APC and its government are bent on justifying their looting of our national resources as well as rationalizing their under-the-table system of selective employment of a few, which favours only their cronies at the expense of majority of Nigerian youth.
“Today, under the APC, Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs’) employment letters are sold far beyond the reach of the children of regular Nigerians while the APC government gloats.”
