Osita Chidoka, a former Aviation Minister, has said the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party’s Peter Obi would have faced similar issues as Bola Tinubu is currently facing if they had emerged as the winner of the 2023 election.
Chidoka claimed this is because the immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari “destroyed” Nigeria’s economy for eight years.
Appearing on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, the PDP chieftain said: “The eight years of Buhari were a destroying eight years. The APC-led Buhari govt destroyed value in a significant and unprecedented manner. Now to cure that damage, there is no switchboard you can just light and change everything overnight.”
“That government actually acquired 23 trillion in Ways and Means and borrowed money in dollars, that has significantly hindered the government’s ability to have foreign exchange because you need to service those debt in dollars.
“So, any government that comes in would have faced significant headwinds whether it was Atiku, Obi or Sowore.
“The difference that the President is suffering is not economics, Nigeria was going barely up. We were going to pay for the foreign exchange they were manipulating and selling to themselves at N400, this president has said we should pay the price.
“Tinubu’s challenge is that he lacks political consensus in Nigeria in making these tough decisions, people who voted for him are a minority in Nigeria, 63 percent of the voters did not vote for him, so he needs to woo them.”