Rivers State Governor and the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, has said the Peoples Democratic Party cannot save the country from its (Nigeria) current challenges.
Amaechi, who spoke on Monday shortly after registering as a card-carrying member of the All Progressives Congress in his hometown, Ubima, Ikwerre Local Government Area, was making a veiled reference to President Goodluck Jonathan’s comment.
Jonathan had during the formal defection of an ex-governor of Sokoto State, Attahiru Bafarawa, to the PDP, boasted that only the PDP could save Nigeria.
The state governor explained that the PDP had been in control of the country for many years and could not save it (Nigeria) from the problem of corruption and unemployment.
Amaechi, who observed that Nigeria’s economy was no longer growing, pointed out that the APC was on a mission to rescue the nation and save it from the PDP through the creation of employment opportunities for unemployed Nigerians.
He said, “We are here to rescue Nigeria. We can’t continue (like this). Look at this crowd you are seeing here, 80 percent of them are unemployed and so when they say PDP will save Nigeria, we ask the question, who has been holding Nigeria for the past how many years? It’s the PDP. So, they can’t be saving Nigeria from themselves.
“We are here to save Nigeria from PDP and when we do that we will try and create employment opportunities for the army of unemployed Nigerians because you must generate and grow the economy. The economy currently is not growing.
“The rate of unemployment, the rate of corruption, the money lost to corruption, if applied to the economy; if applied to industrial development, will create employment opportunities for the unemployed.
“So, the basic thing you will see that will happen is that with this change, with this movement from PDP to APC and the crowd we are going with, when we start to defeat them in Rivers State, we will defeat them in the country and the moment we defeat them, the money we will save from corruption is the money we will use in improving the lives of these people.”