Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has asked the federal government to use 2024 to address the economic hardship currently facing Nigerians.

Atiku in his New Year message released yesterday, offered “adulation to God and a heart full of gratitude” as Nigerians enter the new year.

He, however, acknowledged that 2023 was “definitely a challenging year” with important lessons for the future.

Atiku 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.

“Certainly, many families and businesses already know the intensity of the trying times we are currently going through, though we could have taken a completely different pathway, had the government been smarter.”

Atiku called for 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 Nigerians are going through.”

He urged the government to “show a clear direction of its policy projections and desist from the subsisting behaviour of groping in the dark.”