The national chairman of African Democratic Congress (ADC), Senator David Mark, has said the statistics about increased revenue and economic growth reeled out by the All Progressives Congress (APC) led government are meaningless when they do not positively affect the lives of the people.
Mark, who stated this during the inauguration of the ADC's 50 member committee to formulate the party's manifesto and policy, however told his party members that they must be prepared not just to win power, but to justify power through service.
This comes as chairman of the Policy and Manifesto Committee, Dr. John Oyegun, told members of the committee who might have reservations about the committee's work to quietly step aside, adding that Nigerians are watching everything that the does.
He added that the committee will design a manifesto that will be acceptable to Nigerians, and ensure that persons who get into offices on the party's platform do not become emperors.
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Meanwhile, Mark said "In recent years, government has continued to regale us with statistics about increased revenue, economic growth, and GDP performance. These figures are meaningless when they do not positively affect the lives of the people.
"A growing economy that leaves the majority behind in poverty is fundamentally flawed. Economic progress must be measured by its impact on people's lives, not by statistics alone," Mark said.
The former senate president lamented that families, across the country, are working harder and earning lesser and lesser, food prices rise faster than wages, salaries and incomes can cope.
He said power supply remains epileptic even as tariffs increase astronomically, adding "strangely, the APC government continue to aggravate the citizen's tax burdens. Insecurity continues to disrupt the peoples social and economic life."
He said Nigerians are suffering today perhaps more than any other time in their history.
He said the hardship and poverty that Nigerians are experiencing under the APC administration has gotten worse and compounded by government needlessly vicious policies.
"What Nigerians are therefore desperately looking for are credible alternative ideas, actions and policies. They want policies that would improve their lives today and lay a solid foundation on which they can improve their future. They want policies that show compassion," Mark added.
In his acceptance speech, chairman of the Policy and Manifesto Committee, Dr. John Oyegun, told members of the committee who might have reservations of the committee's work to quietly step aside.
He said "If I may please, and that's for the national executive to consider, that if anybody has any reason to say, ah, these people are going to go extremely left or extremely right or whatever, and it may affect our actions, this is the time to just quietly step back."
Noting that history is being made, Oyegun said the committee will design a message, policies, proposals that will attract the entire population of the country that have given up.
"They haven't thrown themselves fully 100% into our net yet, they are watching everything that we do.
"And the charge you have given us today is that we should help the party develop policies, help the party come out with manifesto, that we make everybody in this country see, as the years go by, what difference an ADC government is making to their lives. And that is something I want to promise you, we will accept.
"What happens normally from experience, you mentioned it in passing in your statement, is that we have spent trillions with very little to show for it in terms of the lives of the people.
"Why? Immediately a manifesto is written, I'm not sure it doesn't go straight into the archives. Because if you remember, the emperors that govern us, they usually come out with their own programs.
"Even their programs they don't faithfully execute. Because the reality today is that we are in a contractor-governed nation. Proposals are prepared by contractors. The profits are already shared by all those who have interests. Pressures are put on the governor or the presidency officials.
"The project gets approved. He has nothing to do with even his own program that he came with. Certainly he has nothing to do with the manifesto they have already approved. So we are going to, from what you yourself have said, have policies that the ordinary man can identify with, programs that the ordinary man can identify with.
"The result of what we have been doing, let me go back one step, is that there's a lot of movement, there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of everything in this nation. But you cannot name a single area in this nation in which the problems, the challenges have been ameliorated. Not one.
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"Decades on and decades on. You cannot point to electricity, which you mentioned, and say, ah, at least we have power. You cannot point to transportation and say, at least I can drive home comfortably.
"You cannot sleep and be in your house and say, ah, I'm secure, without buying all the metal reinforcements and everything, to prevent or make it difficult and challenging for somebody who wants to attack.
"So the drama, the message, the attitude, the approach to governance must change. And we are adopting your beautiful statement, and I want to say we are going to do everything in our power, and the party, to some extent, must be able to influence those they put in governance."
The former APC national chairman said the committee must find an imaginative way to make their assignment meaningful in order not to allow party leaders become emperors.
"But I think that with the manifesto, we hope the party will finally adopt, in a language that the ordinary man can understand and see how he himself fits into it, will change the dynamics of politics in this nation," he said.
