By Dirisu Yakubu
ABUJA- National chairman of the Democratic Peoples Party, Gershom Benson has blamed what he called ‘the people’s suffering’ on the failure of the President Muhammadu Buhari policies, since he took over the mantle of leadership three years ago.

Benson who stated this Monday in an exclusive chat with Vanguard Newspaper faulted the claim by the Presidency that agriculture has under its watch, witnessed a positive turn around, arguing that if the claim is indeed true, Nigerians couldn’t have been “dying of hunger and languishing in poverty as they do today.”

The DPP boss also dismissed as “a fallacy” claims by the federal government that its rice revolution has created millions of jobs for the people.

“The government of Buhari claims that agriculture is doing very well and that rice cultivation has been turned around which means they have created jobs for the people. But all these claims are false and if there is any policy on agriculture whatsoever, it has failed.

“There is too much hunger in the land because a lot of people have been displaced from their farms because of killings and various security threats in some part of the country. The few people who are doing well have too much dependants to take care of and so what you have at the end of the day is increased poverty.

“Government policies have failed. They say we are out of recession but Nigerians are worse off today than they were three years ago. Per capita income is as low as it can be. So, why won’t people be poor? Nigerian successive governments owed contractors N3 trillion and this government has not make any effort as a policy to pay our indigenous contractors. If you pay half of that amount today, our economy would be revamped completely ” he said.

He lamented the inverse relationship between allocation to capital expenditure in the budgets of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the living standards of the people.

“Many companies have laid off some of their member of staff for upward of one or two years. Those workers are at home today. When a government budget more for capital expenditure than recurrent expenditures, that government is creating wealth, employment and the standard of living of the people will improve.

“But this is the first government that budgeted in like manner, so how come the reverse is the case? Who are those taking the jobs? They have released so much money on infrastructure but what jobs are available? This government should take a serious look at itself,” he added.