The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described as “cooked up” the indices presented by the All Progressives Congress (APC) controlled Federal Government as evidence of its achievements in strengthening Nigeria’s economy since it came to power in May 2015.
In a statement on Thursday, PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, said such indices would not be helpful to President Mohammadu Buhari.
The statement is in reaction to the defense put up by the Federal Government after former President Olusegun Obasanjo criticised President Buhari, his administration and the APC for failing Nigerians, especially when it comes to the economy, tackling nepotism and understanding the dynamics of internal politics in the country.
Obasanjo had in his statement on Tuesday which went viral warned President Buhari not to toy with the patience of Nigerians but should in a dignified way dismount from the horse (seat of power).
One day after, the Minister for Information and Culture, Mr Lai Mohammed, issued a statement to defend his principal.
Listing several areas in which he insisted the Buhari administration had recorded success in managing and strengthening the country’s economy, the minister accused the former President of failing to notice the achievement of the Federal Government under the pretext of being too busy.
But Mr Ologbondiyan accused the Federal Government of refusing to understand that the issues raised by Obasanjo were already trending in the minds of Nigerians and cannot be dismissed with doctored reports and half-truths.
While describing as highly unfortunate the very serious issues of deteriorating economy, incessant killings, fuel crisis, corruption in the corridors of power and absolute failure of governance as raised by Nigerians, the party’s scribe criticised the APC for resorting to ‘falsehood.’
The statement read in part: “It amounts to executive rascality for the APC Federal Government to use its Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, to falsely claim that the economy, which it wrecked, has come out of recession, when the glaring reality shows skyrocketing costs, soaring unemployment rate, unabating closure of businesses as well as accumulation of foreign and domestic debts.
“In its attempt to further hoodwink Nigerians, the Federal Government through the minister of information cleverly stated that the nation’s Foreign Reserves had risen to $40bn, while covering the fact presented by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) that our foreign debt has also escalated to $15.2bn under APC’s misrule.
“This is also a government whose domestic debt profile has scared many contractors off their sites and forcing millions of Nigerians into the labour market while development projects initiated by the PDP across the nation remains stagnated.”
