Salami’s Appointment, Scapegoat For APC Government – PDP

Salami’s Appointment, Scapegoat For APC Government – PDP

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has said the appointment of Dr. Doyin Salami by President Muhammadu Buhari as his chief economic adviser barely a year to the end of his administration smacks of making the economist a scapegoat for the All Progressives Congress (APC) government’s failures.

The National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Hon Debo Ologunagba, in a statement said it was evident that Salami might end up being rubbished and diminished as a titular adviser given that the Buhari presidency and the APC, “in their ignorance, arrogance and incompetence, are never known to have any respect or regard for professional advice on governance and policy.”

Ologunagba said as long as the APC, with its insensitivity to the plight of Nigerians is in government, involving professionals like Dr Salami can never make a headway but risk being smeared with failure.

He said, “If the APC government did not listen to Dr Salami as the head of the hurriedly established Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC), it will not now take his advice in his new capacity because the APC government lacks the listening ears, competence, capacity, integrity and political will and desire for good governance.

“President Buhari and the APC have never prioritized the economy. The result is a near collapsed economy with two recessions within six years; a 71 percent poverty rate, 33.1 percent unemployment rate, over $38 billion external debt and an unenviable national status as the poverty capital of the world. For this, they desperately seek to use renowned professionals like Dr. Salami as fall guys especially as we approach the 2023 general elections.

“If President Buhari and the APC had listened to well-thought-out advice by patriotic Nigerians as well as the PDP on how to stabilize and grow the economy, our nation would not be in the current economic quagmire where over 80 million Nigerians can no longer afford their daily meals and other basic necessities of life.

“The APC failed to heed the counsel to end its corruption, open up and diversify our economy, review its restrictive and exclusionist policies, invest more in our productive sectors, end its victimization of hardworking Nigerian entrepreneurs, adopt broad-based approach that allows for greater private sector participation and stop demarketing our country especially the youths in the international arena.