The trio of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former governors Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers) and Malam Nasiru El-Rufai (Kaduna) came under scathing attack by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
It was over what the ruling party called a baseless allegation that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led APC administration has weaponized poverty.
At the weekend, the three opposition figures accused Tinubu of failing to eradicate the scourge of poverty in the last two years of his administration.
They spoke in Abuja at 60th birthday anniversary of Amaechi, who was Transportation Minister between 2015 and 2023.
APC National Publicity Secretary Felix Morka, who described the allegation as baseless, said the trio should be ashamed for failing to achieve the feat attained in just two years during their stint on the corridors of power for a quarter of a century.
In a statement, Morka noted that instead of focusing on the birthday the trio, whom he described as “leading displaced rent-seekers”, they condescended into showcasing their frenzied desperation to grab power purely for their self-aggrandizement.
The statement reads: “These three individuals have occupied Nigeria’s highest political offices between 1999 and 2023, either as vice president, governors, or ministers, among other important positions.
“In all 24 years, the trio, individually or collectively, could not and did not eradicate poverty in their states or the country. They did not even attempt to address, let alone tackle, the structural challenges and distortions that stifled the economy and worsened poverty over the years.
“Rather, they reveled in mindless rent-seeking behavior, sold national assets to their cronies for mere pittance, engaged in corrupt and wasteful expenditures in their states, and relentlessly sponsored state violence against their own people.
“Take the case of Amaechi, the celebrant, who served for an unbroken total of 24 years – eight years as Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, eight years as Governor of Rivers State, and eight years as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“That’s about a quarter of a century of freeloading by Amaechi on state resources, with absolutely no record of attempting to combat poverty in his Rivers State or the country.
“When Amaechi declared, ‘I am hungry,’ he must mean, and must be understood to mean, that he is hungry and desperate to return to his felt entitled dependency on state resources and patronage.
“That he is hungry barely two years out of office simply underscores the depth of the self-serving motivations of Amaechi and his coalition partners in their quest for power for selfish exploitation, and not for the interest of the people.”
Morka noted that the allegation by Amaechi and his co-voyagers was informed by the loss of grip on the economy which they have fleeced on for years.
He said: “Accustomed to fleecing the economy, they are now compelled by Tinubu’s unprecedented reforms to adapt to a new reality where hard work, productivity, and innovation are rewarded.
“Their criticisms of President Tinubu’s reforms are decidedly self-serving, driven by a desperate quest for power to satiate their voracious rent-seeking appetite, which has long stifled and denied progress to the economy.
“On contrary, it was the failure of previous administrations, particularly 16 years of PDP administrations, to allow the Naira to find its real value that created the economic conditions of poverty that the present administration is now addressing.
“The erstwhile artificially overvalued Naira stifled local production, encouraged import dependency, and exacerbated poverty. Ironically, Atiku and Peter Obi, who are now vociferously criticizing President Tinubu’s policies, amassed their wealth from the very import-dependent system they are desperately trying to preserve.
