Atiku Abubakar, the former Vice President, has called on the Federal Government to tackle the economic challenges faced by Nigerians in 2024.
Atiku made this appeal in his New Year message to the nation for 2024.
Sunday, conveyed his adulation to God and expressed a heart full of gratitude as Nigerians step into the new year.
He acknowledged, however, that 2023 was undeniably a challenging year, offering important lessons for the future
‘The rising cost of food items, goods and services, the malfunction in our national economy and the degenerating state of our national and community security are all existential challenges that we have to face squarely in the New Year,’ Atiku said.
He criticised the government’s ‘policy prescriptions,’ stating, ‘Certainly, many families and businesses already know the intensity of the trying times that we are currently going through – though we could have taken a completely different pathway, had the government been smarter.’
Atiku called for a ‘well-thought vision of National Planning that will deliberately make the common people of Nigeria the centrepiece of our development.’
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‘The Year 2024 is still new on its canvas, and so there is ample time for the current government to champion a pathway to addressing the acute hardship that Nigerians are going through,’ he continued.
He urged the government to ‘show a clear direction of its policy projections and desist from the subsisting behaviour of groping in the dark.’
The economic challenges took a turn for the worse when the current president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, announced the cessation of fuel subsidy during his inauguration.
In a matter of days, fuel prices surged to 600 naira per litre.
The ripple effect has been felt directly or indirectly on the prices of goods and services, eliciting grievances from transporters who are burdened by the development and are likely to raise transport fares to compensate for the increased cost of fuel.