COVID-19: Your Broadcast Empty, PDP Mocks Buhari

By Peter Akpah

COVID-19: Your broadcast empty, PDP mocks Buhari

MARCH 29, 2020

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Sunday night lamented decried President Muhammadu Buhari’s broadcast on the COVID-19 pandemic, describing it as empty and failing to address the yearnings of Nigerians.

This is even as the party said outside the social distancing and isolation, which Nigerians had already imposed on themselves, “Mr. President had no new solutions to offer our nation.”
In a late reaction via a statement by spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP noted that that the address did not touch on the real necessities of majority of Nigerians who reside in the states where President Buhari had ordered a lockdown.

President Buhari had in the broadcast ordered a total lockdown in Lagos and the Federal Capital Territory for 14 days in a bid to stem the control of the Coronavirus.

The statement read: “It is unfortunate that Mr. President failed to respond to demands on hope for medications, direct social palliatives, cut in taxes as well as a reduction in the pump price of fuel even with the cut in the price of petroleum and crude oil in the international market.

“Our party notes as saddening that even in areas where Mr. President announced an ambitious intervention, such remained largely cosmetic as there is no clear palliative content but moratoriums on loans with no clear data for implementation.
“Mr President is reminded that already, the COVID-19 had affected the performance of those loans.

Granting them moratoriums is therefore of no consequence to the capital and interest on them.

“It is rather unfortunate that Nigerians had to wait this long for an address that came out empty and failed to respond to anxieties.