The Presidency has attacked former Vice President Atiku Abubakar for his comment on the Bloomberg report that Nigeria may emerge the country with the highest unemployment rate in the world.
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The position of the Presidency was stated by the Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, on a Channels Television programme: Sunday Politics, on Sunday.
Adesina said the recent report released by the National Bureau of Statistics that 23.2 million Nigerians are unemployed was not new.
He said: “You will recall that in the build-up to the 2015 elections, when the APC (All Progressives Congress) was campaigning, the figure that was used by then candidate Buhari was that a minimum of 30 million Nigerians were unemployed, particularly youths, and that his government was going to do something about it.
“That was in 2014/2015.
“So, don’t make it appear like a genie that just came out of the bottle.
“No, it had always been there.
“It had always been there.
“The former Vice-President was in power for eight years.
“Now, he is in the opposition.
“You can’t take whatever he says as the gospel.
“The question is when former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar was in government with President Olusegun Obasanjo, where did they take the country?
“Where did they leave the country?
“I have seen clips on social media where he said some things they promised to do, particularly on power; some people collected some trillions and didn’t deliver….
“The former Vice-President is part of the rot this country became.
“He cannot exculpate himself.
He cannot sit in judgment over anybody.
“He played his part for eight years and they left the country where they left it.
“He cannot like Pontius Pilate begin to wash himself clean of what Nigeria has become.”