Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, has said Omoyele Sowore, the presidential candidate of African Action Congress (AAC), knows absolutely nothing about Nigeria.
Atiku had on Wednesday, in response to the unveiling of the newly commercialized Nigerian National Petroleum Commission Limited (NNPC Lmited), tweeted that he had in 2018 made public his plans to reform the NNPC, but the APC government denigrated his plan.
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He wrote, “I had in 2018 made public my plans to reform the NNPC to make it more profitable, transparent and efficient. The APC-led government denigrated me for my patriotic vision.
“But today, I am happy to note that the same government has taken a tentative step along the lines of the suggestions that I had made. It is a step in the right direction, but we are still far from what I had envisaged.
“I hope I’ll have the opportunity to complete the process of turning the NNPC into a genuinely world-class company in the mould of NLNG, Aramco of Saudi Arabia and Petrobras of Brazil, where Nigerians and institutions will invest in.”
Responding to the tweet, Sowore criticized the former vice president for complaining over the nation’s blackout.
Sowore said Atiku was the vice president when his principal, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, budgeted $16 billion to revive power but with nothing to write home about.
Sowore wrote, “The National Electrical grid collapse started when you and Obasanjo invested $16 billion to procure darkness for Nigeria. President Muhammadu Buhari regime came to gazette the grid collapse as a law. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, don’t pretend that you care about the national grid!”
When the issue was raised before Atiku during an interview with ARISE TV on Friday, he said the AAC presidential candidate lives outside Nigeria and comes only after four years to contest election.
He said, “He is my opponent, what do you expect him to say? He has all along lived outside this country. He doesn’t even know the policy implementation or even the policy initiative. When we came in, the total generation was about 4,000 megawatts. We initiated the building of nine additional power stations. By the time those nine were finished, the capacity has gone up from 4,000 to 13,000 megawatts.
“Unfortunately, no correspondent increase as far as the transmission lines are concerned. There is no way our transmission lines cannot evacuate the power you are producing that they cannot collapse.
“These additional nine power stations were completed by Jonathan. Umaru Yar’adua was on it. He died and Jonathan continued and he completed them. That is why any time there is an increase in the power generation and then you’ve the transmission system that cannot evacuate power, there will be a collapse.
“So, he (Sowore) doesn’t even know, because he lives outside this country. He comes after every four years and contest for the presidency and goes back. He fails and goes back again. So, what does Sowore know about this country? Nothing; absolutely nothing.”
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