By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
Nigeria’s former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, has reacted to claims made by President Muhammadu Buhari in his indepence day speech that those who ruled the country between 1999 and 2015, superintended over the near destruction of the country.
Buhari was elected president in 2015, and got a second term mandate in 2019.
Shockingly, the president said all his predecessors in the fourth republic slept on the job, thereby superintending on the near destruction of the country.
“Those in the previous Governments from 1999 – 2015 who presided over the near destruction of the country have now the impudence to attempt to criticize our efforts.”
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has been a consistent critique of President Muhammadu Buhari’s government. Only recently, he said Nigeria has become a basket case.
Atiku, who was vice president under Obasanjo, and the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 election, said that the claims by Buhari were false because the facts showed the opposite.
“Between 1999 and 2007, Nigeria paid off her entire foreign debt while maintaining an unprecedented 6 per cent annual GDP growth. Those were periods of national restoration, and I am very proud of the work President Obasanjo and I did for this nation we care so much for. Facts don’t lie,” he tweeted via his handle @atiku.