Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Policy Communication, Daniel Bwala, said yesterday Nigerians have been hungry since 1999 when Atiku Abubakar was vice president of Nigeria.
Atiku served as the Vice President of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007 during the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo.
Bwala stated this in an interview on TVC, while reacting to comments by the former vice president who, in a post on X, attributed the cause of the prevailing insecurity in the country to worsening poverty and hunger.
But responding, Bwala, who dismissed Atiku’s claim, said hunger and hardship were not unique to the current administration.
He accused opposition politicians of attempting to discredit the federal government, adding that they had shifted the narratives after being proved wrong on economic policy.
Bwala, who noted that hunger had always been a recurring challenge in Nigeria’s history, said: “The most fundamental thing is the issue he (Atiku) has raised. Does he have a valid point? He does not because the data suggests otherwise.
“What do you expect them to do other than to try their best to see how they can demarcate the government in order to create the buzz around what they do’
“He said we are creating hunger. Is he blinded or doesn’t he hear the fact of the progress we’ve made? For example, we have increased foreign reserves.
“Our net export has increased. We have less dependency on imports. We have created a structure that has stabilised the economy.
“He won’t talk about that. He won’t talk about the Caesarean session we provided in all the hospitals in Nigeria — how the people don’t have to suffer.
“He doesn’t talk about that. He doesn’t talk about the NELFUND we have provided. He should be able to speak and say whether it’s working or not.
“They started first by saying our economic model is wrong. Now, after two years, we’ve been able to prove them otherwise. They are dog whistling for civil unrest.
“This rhetoric of Nigerians is hungry; we have to be able to grow out of it. Nigerians were hungry in 1960, hungry in 1980, hungry in 1990, hungry in 1999. It was between 1999 to 2003 that somebody sang ‘Nigeria Jaga Jaga’. You mean he sang in the abstract?
“There has never been a time in which there is no one problem or the other as far as the Nigerian people are concerned. But judge the metrics.
“Judge us not by the rhetoric of Nigerians are hungry. Judge us by the dynamics of what we’re putting in place and whether it’s working.”
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