The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has lashed out at a former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, over his recent comments on economic hardship in Nigeria.

Amaechi, who served as a minister under immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari, lamented the high cost of living, rising fuel prices, and food prices, among others.

The two-term former governor of Rivers State also expressed disappointment over the lack of protests against hardship in the country.

Reacting, the APC, in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, on Friday, October 11, 2024, said Amaechi’s comments were “insensitive, god-awful, and unpatriotic”.

Morka said the former Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly was embittered over his failure to be in the saddle of the current government.

Amaechi vied for the presidential ticket of the APC but lost to President Bola Tinubu in the party’s primaries where he emerged as the runner-up.

The APC spokesman stated: “If those in power ‘steal money’ as Amaechi mischievously alleged, how come he can’t afford ‘to buy diesel’ barely two years after ‘stealing’ for over 24 years in power as Speaker, Governor and Minister?

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“The only real anger that Amaechi and his fellow tribesmen of naysayers of the likes of Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, must feel is that they are not in the saddle of government today. But that was a decision made by Nigeria’s ultimate political authority – the electorate.

“Nigerians are highly perceptive, discerning, demure, and mindful that economic discomforts associated with the administration’s inevitable reforms are transient and will pale into insignificance in comparison to the enduring transformative dividends which are already beginning to manifest. Nigerians will not be cajoled into taking back through street violence what they handed to the administration through the ballot, as Amaechi and his partisan tribesmen would wish.

“It is nauseating to think that these naysayer tribesmen who did absolutely nothing to improve the economy or living conditions for Nigerians while they were in office, now pontificate, endlessly, about what and how things should be done but didn’t and couldn’t do while in power.

“It’s as though they only regain their senses and discover their talents for governance when they are out of power. A tribe of naysayers, is what they are, who never see any good, only gloom, filled with bile and disdain for the determined strides of APC-administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to transform our country’s economy for the benefit of present and future generations of Nigerians.

“One would expect Amaechi to keep busy trying to solve the crippling crisis in Rivers State that he once governed. Instead, he has chosen to stoke anarchy on a national scale. Weaponizing protest and exploiting citizen’s economic discomfort for selfish political objective, as these partisan tribesmen are doing, is irresponsible and decidedly unpatriotic.”

Morka, however, urged Nigerians to dismiss the “call to anarchy by Amaechi and his partisan tribesmen and to remain patient and continue to support President Tinubu’s bold effort to transform our country’s economy once and for all.”

The Star