Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has urged President Goodluck Jonathan to shake off his administration’s “trade mark lethargy” and take governance more seriously in 2013, in order to ease the hardship his government has foisted on Nigerians, especially in the past year.
In a New Year message issued in Lagos on Tuesday by Alhaji Lai Mohammed, its national publicity secretary, ACN argued that since the country’s return to democratic rule in 1999, the year 2012 ranked among the worst years for Nigerians, even by the very low standard of a non-performing and profligate administration like President Jonathan’s.
It recalled that having ambushed Nigerians on 1st January 2012 with a totally unnecessary and punitive fuel price hike, the Jonathan administration ensured that everything went downhill from that moment until the end of the year, when Nigerians had to pay far above the official price for fuel, with its attendant bandwagon effect on the price of goods and services.
“Mr. President, that singular act of your administration helped to erode whatever trust Nigerians reposed in you. Since trust is a critical element between the government and the governed, you must begin to rebuild trust by delivering on your promises, since trust can neither be decreed nor forced,” the statement read.
“Suffice it to say that Nigerians cannot and will not trust an administration that promises to fight corruption but has presided over the worst cases of corruption in the history of the country; Nigerians cannot and will not trust an administration that sets up committees after committees to probe the oil sector, only to shamelessly dump the reports of the committees in the garbage can!
“And Nigerians cannot and will not trust a spendthrift administration that wastes scarce resources on flimsy projects like banquet halls and mansions for a few government officials, when millions are jobless and homeless.”
The party advised President Jonathan to dump his “amorphous Transformation Agenda” in favour of a compact programme that prioritises security, job creation, infrastructural development and the fight against corruption.
It also advised the administration to stop relying on phantom statistics to give Nigerians the impression that it is delivering the dividends of democracy, when indeed the opposite is the case.
“The Jonathan administration trumpets economic growth figures with glee. But of what use is economic growth that has not translated to better lives for the people, created jobs, put food on the table and made our roads more motorable?
“Despite this so-called economic growth, the reality of the Nigerian situation is that more of our youths are daily meandering through traffic in our major cities selling toothpicks, rat poison and pure water. What does this so-called economic growth figures mean to them?
“In 2013, the Jonathan administration must jettison cooked-up economic growth figures and make a concerted effort to reverse the situation that has seen an estimated 11 million Nigerian children out of school, 46 per cent of our youths unemployed, made Nigeria a country with one of the highest rates of road crashes in the world, put the country’s life expectancy at a mere 51.9 years (compared with 62.7 for Gabon, 73.4 for Mauritius and 74 for Libya) and the indignity of annually seeing the country ranked among the most corrupt.”
