PDP Reacts To APC’s Plans To Re-introduce Toll Gates.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has asked the All Progressives Congress (APC) to abandon its intentions to reintroduce toll gates in Nigeria.
This request was made in a statement signed by the PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, on Sunday in Abuja, headed “Toll Gates: Stop Imposing More Hardship on Nigerians, PDP Tells APC.”
The opposition party called the APC-led government’s decision to install toll gates on major Nigerian highways a “downright act of wickedness against the suffering populace.”
“Our party, after an extensive consideration, insists that the move to return the toll gates to allow APC interests to further fleece already impoverished Nigerians, is offensive, vexatious, inflammatory and as such should not be contemplated under any guise whatsoever.
“The party invites Nigerians to recall that the PDP administration dismantled the toll gates 18 years ago in order to ease the burden on the people as well as end the corrupt regime of operators,” Ologbondiyan said.
While rejecting the move, the PDP further said:
“APC’s decision to impose levies on the highway, even after it had increased the pump price of fuel to an extortionate N165 per liter, further confirms that APC is a heartless party that is out to fleece and impose hardship on the people to benefit its leaders.”
The party stated that, given the APC’s vast financial resources, there was no justification for putting further misery on Nigerians in the name of tolls.
According to the PDP, this is especially true because the administration has been unable to account for over N1.4 trillion budgeted for projects and over N120 billion received from Nigerians as motor vehicle license fees over the last six years.
It also noted that “the Buhari Presidency has not taken any step to recover the over N25 trillion reportedly stolen by APC leaders in various revenue generating agencies including the NNPC, NEMA, NPA, FIRS, NIMASA, NDDC, NHIS among others, where culprits are merely ‘eased out’ instead of being prosecuted.”
In response, a former Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Yekini Nabena said, “The PDP should go back and study how to play opposition politics because they will remain in opposition for a long time.
“The decision to re-introduce toll gates is an economic decision. In most developed and developing countries of the world there are toll gates. Money generated from them is used to maintain the roads. We all know what Covid-19 has done to economies around the world.”
