PDP has failed Nigerians – Atiku

 Vice-President Atiku Abubakar

Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar on Friday said the Peoples Democratic Party had failed Nigerians.

Atiku, who is a presidential aspirant under the umbrella of the party, said this was why he wanted to be president and correct the mistakes the party had made in the past.

The former vice-president was asked a question on whether he did not feel the party had failed Nigerians based on the allegations of poor performance of successive governments in the past years.

On the remarks of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, where he described the emergence of Atiku as the consensus candidate as laughable, the former vice-president said maybe Obasanjo would not have been laughing if he was not brought from the prison to be president in 1998.

Atiku, who spoke through the Deputy Director-General (Operations) of his campaign organisation, described the economic programme of President Goodluck Jonathan as “voodoo.”

He said the implementation of the budget was regrettable, adding that rather than providing information on the performance of the economy, the Federal Government was trying to distort facts and confuse Nigerians on the economic performance of the present administration.

Atiku’s statement, which was read by Ibrahim stated in part, “It will be recalled that the 2010 Amended and Supplementary Budgets provide N2,669.0bn for recurrent non debt expenditure, N1,764.69bn for capital expenditure, N542.38bn for debt service and N183.58bn for statutory transfers. These figures as a percentage of the overall budget represent 52 per cent for recurrent non debt expenditure, 34 per cent for capital expenditure, 10 per cent for debt service and four per cent for statutory transfers respectively.

“Aganga had informed the House of Representatives in plenary in the first week of November 2010 that of the entire capital budget, only the sum of N749bn had been released, cash-backed and available for Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government to draw from.

“This is however N1bn less than the N750bn he claimed to have released and cash-backed in response to Atiku’s statement. Dr. Aganga has also been quoted to state that the federal government will increase the released and cash-backed sum to N900bn by the end of 2010, which will be an addition of N150bn.

“The Minister of Finance further informed the House of Representative that of the N750bn cash-backed, only N404.5bn has been accessed and utilised by MDAs.”

Source:http://www.punchng.com