Atiku claims PDP reduced poverty throughout its 16 years in power

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has slammed the All Progressives Congress (APC) for accusing the party of impoverishing Nigerians during its 16-year reign in the country.

The APC Director of Publicity, Bala Ibrahim, had in a recent interview blamed the major opposition party for plunging 133 million Nigerians into poverty.

Ibrahim, who stated this in his reaction to the recent statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics, accused the PDP of misrule throughout its years in power.

However, Atiku who spoke at the Arise TV presidential town hall meeting on Sunday dismissed the ruling party’s submission as unfair.

He claimed the PDP initiated several programmes aimed at reducing poverty in the country.

He said: “I think Nigerians must be fair in their judgement of the opposition party in terms of poverty in the country. When PDP was in power, we came up with a lot of programmes meant to eradicate poverty. One would only expect that those programmes should have been built on.

“So it’s unfair to judge PDP as a cause of the problem. If most of our programmes have been sustained, I’m sure the problem wouldn’t have been the way it is now.”

Source: Ripples Nigeria