"Our campaign stresses that Nigerians cannot afford to gloss over the horrible experiences which they have been made to endure in almost eight years of APC, the administration which Tinubu claimed to have unilaterally foisted upon our country."
The Atiku/Okowa Presidential Campaign Organisation has charged Nigerians to see the 25 February presidential election as an opportunity to deal with the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, a devastating electoral punch "for the anguish, pain, sufferings, mass killings and untold hardships they visited on Nigerians in the almost eight years of the party's calamitous administration."
The campaign organisation urged Nigerians to recompense the APC with a humiliating defeat by voting en-masse for the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, who, it said embodies the hope for a new lease of life in our country.
This was contained in a statement by one of its spokespersons, Kola Ologbondiyan, in Abuja on Tuesday.
"Our campaign stresses that Nigerians cannot afford to gloss over the horrible experiences which they have been made to endure in almost eight years of APC, the administration which Tinubu claimed to have unilaterally foisted upon our country.
"Nigerians should approach the ballot box with a determination to repay the APC and Tinubu for the devastation they caused our country by opening her to terrorists and marauders to kill and maim our compatriots, rape our women and take Nigerians into slavery in their own country.
"The APC took pleasure in watching the killing of innocent Nigerians, including the massacre of our youths during the EndSARS protest of October 2020; the APC also turned our nation into a large killing field, brought a near fascist regime and foisted a terrible siege mentality on the people.
"Nigerians must go to the presidential election with the consciousness of how the arrogant, abusive, insensitive, and incompetent APC and its presidential candidate viciously pillaged our national patrimony, turned our revenues generating agencies into their cash cows, wrecked our once robust economy which was hitherto rated as one of the fastest growing in the world, ruined our productive sectors, took away jobs from our youths and turned our nation into the poverty capital of the world, where over 100 million Nigerians can no longer afford their daily meals and other basic necessities of life," it said.
The organisation said Nigerians "must remember how the APC plundered our national treasury, imposed policies that ruined the value of our Naira, imposed heavy taxes and unjustified increase in tariffs for essential goods and services, triggered an astronomical rise in the cost of food and indispensable commodities, reduced the purchasing power of citizens, unimaginably turned industrious Nigerians to beggars and brought so much anguish that Nigerians resorted to suicide and slavery mission abroad as options."
It asked Nigerians to bear in mind how APC leaders pillaged the petroleum sector, through a very fraudulent subsidy regime and criminal increase in the pump price of fuel through which trillions of naira were meant for our developmental needs; healthcare, education, security, housing, employment and critical infrastructure was diverted to the party's interests.
It recounted that "under the PDP, a litre of fuel which sold at N97 now sells between N400 to N500 in many parts of the country, a bag of rice which sold for N8000 now sells for N40,000 and above, a measure of beans which sold at N250, now sells for N1000, a measure of garri which sold for about N100 now sells for N450 and above, a litre of kerosene which sold for N150 now sells for above N1000 a litre, a bottle of palm oil which sold for N300 now sells for N1,200 under APC anti-people policies."
The organisation called on Nigerians to unite against the APC in Saturday's election and vote for Atiku.
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It said: "Our campaign calls on Nigerians, including those whose loved ones fell victim of the mindless killings, those maimed as victims of rape, kidnap and arson attacks, those whose families gave up on life and took the supreme option, those suffering all forms of social dislocations occasioned by the compromising of national security by the APC; those whose jobs and means of livelihood were taken away; families who cannot afford their daily meals as well as all Nigerians who are suffering one form of anguish or the other because of the misrule of the APC to stand up, unite and resist the APC by voting for Atiku Abubakar on February 25, 2023.
"This election is a referendum on the eight years of the APC, a government that Tinubu claimed to have personally installed under which Nigerians have suffered untold hardships.
"The 2023 presidential election is a grand opportunity for all Nigerians to liberate themselves from the atrocious APC by voting en masse for Atiku Abubakar, who is leading the charge in the mission to rescue, recover and rebuild our nation from the misrule of the APC. "
