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The All Progressives Congress (APC) said the recent comment about Nigeria’s economy by Peter Obi is aimed at instigating Nigerians against President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
The ruling party in a statement signed by its spokesman, Felix Morka, on Tuesday, July 23, 2024, accused the 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party of "inflaming passion and mobilising outrage through false and manipulative narrative."
This is coming 24 hours after Bayo Onanuga, the Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to the president, alleged Obi is ‘working up his mob’ ahead of the planned protests to ‘destabilize the country.’
The APC statement was released in reaction to Obi’s tweet on Monday, in which he highlighted Nigeria’s economic challenges.
Obi said foreign and local investors are losing faith in the future growth of Nigeria’s economy, while Nigerian “leaders are more concerned with funding their selfish luxuries and individual lavishness.”
He said Nigeria will not “achieve a peaceful and secure society” until Nigerian leaders see politics as a service to the people.
However, the APC disagreed with Obi’s position on Nigeria’s economy, saying “Economic challenges and hardship are a stark reality of most countries of the world today.”
The ruling party described the ex-governor’s submission on the economy as “an admixture of half-truths, blatant distortions and misinformation calculated to mobilise outrage against the APC government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.”
“His 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,” the party stated.
The party said it is hypocritical of Obi to expect Tinubu to achieve what he “failed miserably to accomplish in eight years as governor of Anambra State.”
The statement reads in part, “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 administration’s focused and determined efforts to tackle the country’s challenges through diversification, massive infrastructure development, social welfare, agricultural revolution and sustained improvements in national security are certain to accelerate Nigeria’s resurgence, create jobs and lift millions of our people out of poverty.
“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 ₦6.52 trillion trade surplus in the first quarter of 2024 marking a positive shift from a long history of trade deficits.
“Despite clearing the backlog of the foreign exchange debts owed foreign airlines and other economic actors by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the nation’s foreign reserves have continued to expand, hitting upwards of $34 billion, the highest in recent times. Capital inflow into the country increased by 66.27 percent this year alone.”
The party concluded that President Tinubu remains focused and committed to building lasting blocks of economic prosperity for Nigeria.