The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has accused President Muhammadu Buhari of running a communist economic agenda.
The party said the administration’s attempts to repeal the provisions of the Foreign Exchange And Miscellaneous Provisions Act, otherwise known as Decree No.17 of 1995 and replace it with “unilateral imposition of new regulations was not acceptable.
In a statement on Sunday by the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, the PDP kicked against what it described as moves by Buhari to deny Nigerians the right to freely open and operate domiciliary accounts.
“This Act remains the subsisting law regulating the operations of domiciliary accounts in Nigeria and by its provisions therefore, Nigerians are empowered to freely open and operate domiciliary accounts.
“As such, any enactment and or regulation inconsistent with the provisions of this Act are deemed void. Thus, the recent foreign exchange transaction restrictions by this government are illegal, unlawful and void.
“Besides the provisions of the law, the PDP declares this administration’s archaic communist economic agenda as unworkable and unsustainable”, the statement said.
The PDP said President Buhari should remember that “this is 2015 and not 1984″, stressing that trade and import restrictions are archaic and outdated.
It added that “we are practicing a proper democracy and not the dictatorship of the politburo under a communist regime”.
The PDP also said the apparent absence of an economic team in the third month of the administration was leading the country into economic quagmire and doldrums.
The statement continued, “In the past, we had given examples of the devastating effect of lack of an economic team and a clear-cut fiscal policy by this administration as evidenced in the lull and painful decline in the stock market, spiral rate of inflation, the disastrous outing of the government team in bilateral talks during the recent visit to the United States of America and the shambolic state of our economy at present.
“This confusion has been extended to operations and regulations of the foreign exchange transactions in Nigeria wherein the government is making it impossible for honest Nigerians to engage in free trade and regulate their personal activities as guaranteed by the constitution, and this is clearly an agenda to illegally impose a communist economic regime on Nigerians.
“In a desperate attempt to create a semblance of movement out of the clearly motionless and stoic state of affairs of this government, they have reeled out bans and complete clampdown on free trade. One begins to wonder therefore whether we are not heading back to the era of import duty licenses and regulation of commodity prices”.
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