Atiku’s economic plan a rehash of 1986 SAP pocketbook, says Okechukwu A foundation member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Osita Okechukwu, has said the economic plan released last week by the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, is a rehash of the 1986 economic policy of the infamous Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the General Ibrahim Babangida era. In a statement yesterday in Abuja, Okechukwu, who is also the Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), said the PDP flag bearer has nothing new to offer Nigeria. Writing off Atiku Abubakar’s economic blueprint, Okechukwu said: “I watched with rapt attention but in deep regrets that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s Economic Plan delivered at the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) last Monday is more or less like the nebulous economic policy of Structural Adjustment Programme’s (SAP’s) Pocketbook of 1986. “The former Vice President harped profoundly on privatisation of state-owned enterprises as the fulcrum of his economic revitalisation programme, akin to SAP proponents of yore. “Whereas one is not against private sector partnership; however, what we have in surplus are rent seekers, and scanty industrialists. “Therefore, I am not surprised that a man who breached PDP’s constitution and, by extension, failed to unite his party, did not bother to do the needful assessment, which posits that 80 per cent of state-owned enterprises privatised under his chairmanship of the National Council of Privatisation (NCP) and indeed the 16 years of PDP leadership, went comatose.” Read Also: 2023: Southwest Arewa shuns Atiku, backs Tinubu The APC chieftain recalled that in 1999 when PDP came to power with Atiku as the Chairman of the NCP, the then ruling party dusted up the SAP Pocketbook and stripped the country’s national assets, including profitable companies like NICON Insurance, NICON Hilton Hotel, Niger Dock and unprofitable companies, like Distribution Electricity Distribution Companies (DEDCs).