The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has said that the latest statements credited to the presidential candidate of the opposition Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 general election, Peter Obi, on the country’s economic situation were an admixture of half truths, blatant distortions and misinformation calculated to mobilise outrage against the government led by President Bola Tinubu.
APC, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, on Tuesday night, said Obi has continued, unabashedly, to showcase his obsessive devotion to self promotion against the best interest of Nigeria.
According to Morka, “Obi’s warped conclusion that Nigeria’s economic crisis was caused by nine years of APC-led administration is a highly revisionist, dishonest, distorted and deliberately misleading assessment of the country’s economic trajectory in the last decade.
“He (Obi) opined, rather mischievously, that no efforts were being made by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration to tackle poverty and unemployment in the country.
“The facts tell a far more complex and different story. The country’s economic decline began under the watch of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with GDP growth plummeting from 7.98% in 2010 to 2.79% in 2015. And since 2015, the global oil price crash, geopolitical tensions, climate change, global COVID pandemic and rising population have all taken a toll on Nigeria’s economy that is almost entirely dependent on drastically reduced oil export earnings.
“The growth recorded during the PDP years was due entirely to high price of crude oil and increased government spending that it supported. It is noteworthy that between 2007-2014, Nigeria earned $531.2 billion under the PDP, compared to $287.8 billion under APC between 2015-2022.
“This drastically reduced export earnings under the APC administration was even further stretched thin by the country’s population surge from 184 million in 2015 to 229 million in 2024.
Despite the huge revenues available to it, successive PDP administrations neglected to address underlying structural challenges and distortions in the economy leaving the country vulnerable to economic shocks and volatility.
“But in his selfish political desperation, Obi will never acknowledge the complexity of the causation of our economic challenges but would rather attempt to scapegoat the APC administration for all of the country’s economic ills while turning a blind eye to the bold and thoughtful policy interventions of President Tinubu’s administration.”
The APC spokesperson said quite contrary to Obi’s jaundiced and gloomy analysis, in the last one year alone, the country has attracted over $20 billion into the economy, aside recording an all-time high N6.52 trillion trade surplus in the first quarter of 2024, marking a positive shift from a long history of trade deficits.
“Mr Obi is a loquacious and disruptive back seat driver who has assigned himself an ignoble role of an embittered loser and spoiler. Economic challenges and hardship are a stark reality of most countries of the world today, both developed and developing. It is an existential condition that must be tackled and transformed. This is an arduous task that requires collective patriotic collaboration.
“Mr Obi must know that inflaming passion and mobilizing outrage through false and manipulative narratives are not legitimate tools of opposition politics. Expecting President Tinubu to accomplish total transformation of Nigeria in one year, a feat he failed miserably to accomplish in eight years as Governor of Anambra state, is the height of disgraceful hypocrisy,” Morka added.
