Former vice president Atiku Abubakar has warned that Nigeria will face existential challenges in 2024.
In his 2024 New Year Message, Atiku, the Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate in the 2019 and 2023 general elections, said time and season were created to take stock of realities and effect necessary amends.
He charged President Bola Tinubu-led administration to show a clear direction of its policy projections and desist from the subsisting behaviour of groping in the dark in 2024.
He lamented the current intensity of the trying times many families and businesses are going through, adding that an entirely different pathway could have been taken had the government been more competent with its policy prescriptions.
While he expressed gratitude to God and welcomed Nigerians to the new year, Atiku, admitting that the past year was challenging, said lessons learnt are what should prepare Nigerians for the future.
He said, “The rising cost of food items, goods and services, the malfunction in our national economy and the degenerating state of our national and community security are all existential challenges that we have to face squarely in the New Year.
“While many companies have closed their operations in Nigeria and moved their enterprise elsewhere with clearer policies and visions, the situation of life for Nigerians keeps getting direr.
“To walk back from these throes of adversities will require a well-thought vision of National Planning that will deliberately make the common people of Nigeria the centrepiece of our development.
“The Year 2024 is still new on its canvas, and so there is ample time for the current government to champion a pathway to addressing the acute hardship that Nigerians are going through.
“The government must show a clear direction of its policy projections and desist from the subsisting behaviour of groping in the dark.
“While I congratulate all Nigerians for witnessing this New Year, I also wish to call on everyone to double our efforts to put our respective families and businesses in good shape.”
