The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has accused President Muhammadu Buhari of foisting an archaic, communist agenda on the country.
The party was reacting to reports of restrictions on domiciliary accounts by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
It said the Buhari government had failed to draw up a clear economic blueprint for the country, hence the confusion in the system.
“The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) wishes to bring to the notice of President Muhammadu Buhari that the apparent absence of an economic team in the third month of his administration is leading the country into economic quagmire and doldrums,” the PDP said in a statement on Sunday.
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“In the past, we had given examples of the devastating effect of lack of an economic team and a clear-cut fiscal policy by this administration as evidenced in the lull and painful decline in the stock market, spiral rate of inflation, the disastrous outing of the government team in bilateral talks during the recent visit to the United States of America and the shambolic state of our economy at present.
“This confusion has been extended to operations and regulations of the foreign exchange transactions in Nigeria, wherein the government is making it impossible for honest Nigerians to engage in free trade and regulate their personal activities as guaranteed by the constitution, and this is clearly an agenda to illegally impose a communist economic regime on Nigerians.
“In a desperate attempt to create a semblance of movement out of the clearly motionless and stoic state of affairs of this government, they have reeled out bans and complete clampdown on free trade. One begins to wonder therefore whether we are not heading back to the era of import duty licenses and regulation of commodity prices.
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“The most disturbing aspect of this communist economic agenda is the illegal and unlawful attempt to repeal the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Monitoring And Miscellaneous Provisions Act, otherwise known as Decree No 17 of 1995 and replace it with unilateral imposition of new regulations.
“This Act remains the subsisting law regulating the operations of domiciliary accounts in Nigeria and by its provisions therefore, Nigerians are empowered to freely open and operate domiciliary accounts. As such, any enactment and or regulation inconsistent with the provisions of this Act are deemed void. Thus, the recent foreign exchange transaction restrictions by this government are illegal, unlawful and void. Besides the provisions of the law, the PDP declares this administration’s archaic communist economic agenda as unworkable and unsustainable.
“Finally, we wish to remind Mr President that this is 2015 and not 1984; we remind him that trade and import restrictions are archaic and outdated; and we remind him that we are practising a proper democracy and not the dictatorship of the politburo under a communist regime.”
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5 comments
The guys have clearly lost it.
Which guys have lost it?
Your comment..The PDP as a party has just nothing to offer other than criticism to this hopeful changes Nigerians are expecting in this new regime. And dont forget that it is your useless and unpatriotic so called party that brought all the catastrope in both economy and social coexistence to our greater nation, so please keep quite you have nothing to offer.
Name calling don’t solve problems. Neither does insult. Once faced with a challenge, the best thing to do is to confront it in a constructive manner. Whoever caused it (and not supporting that it was caused as some of it was clearly avoidable), we are where we are and we need to urgently navigate ourselves out of it.
The new government has set the right tone on corruption and I expect the system to generally respond positively, provided the government matches that tone with a robust framework. There seems to be a lot of micro-managing going, on which is clearly not sustainable. The government must take an end to end view and provide sustainable solutions. For instance, fuel subsidy is not sustainable, is a huge burden to the economy and should have been stopped by now. Tax and duty waivers granted to some companies significantly reduced government revenue. Taken together with low oil price and fuel subsidy, it should be obvious why the government is under immense pressure to meet its basic obligations. It is difficult to imagine that the people running the government don’t know this; I assume they have adopted short-term measures while working on long term, more sustainable solutions. (But) it is within the duties of the opposition to make reminders of things that can be improved on. Anyone who buys from the same market as others, be it the stock exchange, foreign exchange or even basic things as beans, chicken and fish, must know that there is a deterioration in the situation. This needs to be urgently arrested, as further deterioration may lead to gradual systemic collapse.
It is a good move by Buhari. Let check the dollarisation of Nigerian Economy.
But no one should be fooled; the West will fight back.
It is unfortunate PDP is aligning themselves with the Western Colonialists.