If elected in the upcoming general elections, Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party‘s (PDP) presidential nominee, promises that his administration will tackle the country’s security concerns by making unpopular decisions.
Atiku pledged to prioritise the recovery of the “crawling” economy, particularly through private sector engagement, when he made the comments on Tuesday, September 13, 2022 at the Private Sector Economic Forum organised by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) in Lagos.
Atiku, who served as vice president from 1999 to 2007, stated, “We will make difficult judgments on security issues without fear or favour.” Investment fears confrontation and insecurity and is a cowardly animal. I’ll end the funding curse for infrastructure.
He bemoaned the severity of poverty and the alarming unemployment rate, which he claimed were two of the main causes of the country’s insecurity.
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“Instead of advancing, the Nigerian economy is merely crawling. Since 2015, the per capita income, a gauge of a country’s residents’ well-being, has steadily decreased due to diminishing output and a rapidly expanding population. The situation of Nigerians is worse now than it was in 2015, he claimed.
The economy’s backbone, the oil and gas industry, has seen a drop in 19 of the last 30 quarters since 2014. It still feels like a recession to many economic sectors and common people.
“Under the present administration, our people are not working. More than 23 million people are out of jobs. In just five years between 2015 and 2020, the number of fully employed people dropped by 54%, from 68 million to 31 million people.”
