By Lateef Ibrahim, Abuja
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said that the unabating misrule of the Buhari Presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) pushed Twitter to take its African Headquarters to Ghana instead of Nigeria, despite the fact that Nigeria has far more twitter traffic and more business prospects than Ghana.
The party said this in a statement yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan in Abuja.
The PDP pointed out that Twitter’s preference for Ghana over Nigeria was occasioned by inconsistent economic policies, obnoxious suppression of free speech, stifling of online freedom and open internet by the Buhari administration and the APC.
The main opposition party added, “This is in addition to infrastructural decay, massive corruption and manifest failure of the Buhari Presidency and the APC to address the escalated insecurity brought upon our nation by their incompetent watch”.
It added, “Indeed the decision by Twitter to by-pass Nigeria to locate its African operational base in Ghana is another sad commentary of how our nation, which was hitherto a global investment hub under the PDP, has now been so degraded in global economic competitiveness under the APC.
“Nigerians were heavily despaired on Monday when the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, announced that his company will be setting up its headquarters on the continent in Ghana despite Nigeria’s domineering twitter traffic in the sub region.
“With an estimated 39.6 million twitter subscribers in Nigeria, which is bigger than the population of Ghana, Nigeria ought to be the destination, but for the anti-people policies of the APC administration.
“It is sad that our nation has continued to lose huge foreign direct investments, which would have brought in more economic opportunities, especially for our youths, just because the Buhari Presidency and the APC lack the capacity to deliver on good governance.
‘The preference by Twitter for Ghana over Nigeria has further demonstrated that the Buhari administration’s claims on ease of doing business in Nigeria are mere media hypes.
“Moreover, if President Buhari and the APC have the interest of the struggling youth demography of our nation at heart, they ought to have taken the necessary proactive steps to ensure that Twitter brought this huge investment to Nigeria, particularly given that we have the highest number of Twitter users on the continent.
“It is indeed disturbing that the Buhari administration is taking no decisive steps to address the worsening situation in our country, which has become the world poverty capital under their watch”, it said.
The PDP lamented that it is painful that despite “our national potentials, President Buhari administration has not shown the required commitment of engaging foreign investors and captains of industries to attract investments as being done by Presidents of other countries”
It stressed further, “Instead the Buhari Presidency is only interested in accumulating foreign loans and mortgaging the future of our nation.
“It has therefore becomes clearer that our nation cannot achieve any headway with the APC on the saddle”.
The PDP therefore charged Nigerians to remain focused as “we collectively rally on the opportunities granted by democracy to rescue our nation from the stranglehold of APC misrule”.
