Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has reiterated his commitment to restructuring the Nigerian polity as well as encouraging full participation of the private sector in the growth of the economy if elected president in 2023.
The former Vice President who disclosed this on Wednesday while speaking as a guest at the Nigerian Editors’ Forum in Lagos on Wednesday, also added that his government would not leave any of the geopolitical zones behind in governance.
He said: “Even though PDP won overwhelmingly in 1999, we still included members of the opposition parties in a government of national unity and with that, we were able to ensure unity”.
On the economy, he said he would continue the economic policy former President Olusegun Obasanjo adopted between 1999 and 2007 by continuing with privatisation of the public enterprise.
Atiku, who was also the vice president during the period, said the biggest economies in the world are private-sector driven and the government has little or no interference.
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Atiku said: “We brought liberalisation of the economy, a more private driven economy. Most successful economies allow the private sector to play its role, we saw prosperity.”
He said rather than the government borrowing money to build roads, bridges, such can be conceded to the private sector, then there will be jobs and prosperity.
On how he will improve the security situation, Atiku said he will ensure more recruitment of personnel, more equipment, more training and more votes for the security.
Speaking on national security, Atiku said insecurity was a concurrent issue and an effective security arrangement would involve all tiers of government. According to him, the security challenges are peculiar to each region and as such requires an all-inclusive approach.
On the rising cost of governance, the former VP said he would revisit the Orosanye report and ensure the white paper report is in conformity with the principle of setting up the committee.
Speaking on fuel subsidies, he noted how the PDP government had phased them out in batches, saying: “I was the chairman of the removal of fuel subsidies committee, and I recall how we removed phase 1 and phase 2 of fuel subsidies. I will continue from where we stopped, remove fuel subsidies totally, and channel the subsidy funds back to the economy. In other words, it’s just a fraud.”
He described Nigeria’s debt situation as a mess, saying he would fix it if he is elected president.
His words: “If you are talking about foreign debt, we have done it before, I will engage our creditors and ask for debt forgiveness or cancellation like we did before. Coming to local debt, if we stabilise the economy, we will borrow less, and propose a flexible payment plan.