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The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Thursday 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 nations
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 APCs 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 nations 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.