Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s Information Minister defends Buhari on Obasanjo letter
APC Response to Obasanjo was ‘Cooked Up Indices’, Says PDP
Main opposition party in Nigeria, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has dismissed as ‘cooked-up indices’, the of the Federal Government to the President Muhammadu Buhari, where he asked Buhari to shelve his second-term ambition.
The PDP said the indices presented by the All Progressives Congress (APC) controlled Federal Government in the attempt to justify its claimed achievements in almost three years of governance were cooked up and will be unhelpful to President Mohammadu Buhari at the 2019 elections.
The party further said the Federal Government arrogantly issued misleading indices at a time it ought to be very sober for its failures, thereby exposing the level of scorn and disdain it has for suffering Nigerians.
PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in the statement said the Federal Government has refused to understand that the issues raised by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, for which he advised President Buhari not to seek re-election, are already trending in the minds of Nigerians and cannot be dismissed with doctored reports and half truths.
The party also described as highly unfortunate the resort to falsehood by the Federal Government while cleverly glossing over 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 PDP said 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.
The Federal Government also failed to inform Nigerians that other foreign financial instruments are being depleted, including the Excess Crude Account (ECA), from which they attempted to pilfer $1bn last year.
It is ridiculous for the APC-led Federal Government to rely on an NBS report in giving an impression that the nation’s inflation rate has fallen at 15.37% while hiding the fact that inflation rate as at May 2015, when it took over rein of governance from the PDP, was 13.7%.
This is even as the soaring price of commodities exposes the fact that 15.37% is not positive, as the APC government wants Nigerians to believe. The fact is that the APC is plunging the nation into deeper economic woes while trying to sugarcoat the issues with figures.
Furthermore, the Federal Government attempted to delude Nigerians by claiming that the naira has become stable while glossing over the fact that it fell from about N165/1USD in 2015 to the current appalling N360/1USD.
This is in addition to phony claims of increase in foreign capital inflow of $1.8bn, while refusing to address facts from NBS that under their misrule, 16 million Nigerians are unemployed, 18 million more are underemployed while another 27.44 million refused to work in 2016 for various reasons not unrelated to frustration in the polity.
The fact is that the Buhari-led APC government has overstretched the forbearance of our people just as its display of disdain to the suffering of Nigerians is unprecedented in our national history.