The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council, or APC-PCC, denounced the way that Bola Tinubu, its candidate, had his remarks about the dollar rate misrepresented.
The former Lagos governor’s comments during the party’s election rally on Tuesday in Calabar, the capital of Cross River, were allegedly misrepresented by some media outlets, according to the campaign.
On Wednesday, Bayo Onanuga, the director of media and publicity for the APC-PCC, responded.
According to Onanuga, Tinubu only advised voters to reject the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential nominee, Atiku Abubakar, as a result of their failings during their 16 years in office.
He said the reference to exchange rate was not in any way an attack on President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration but an attempt to capture how the economic mismanagement of the PDP created a forex crisis since 2015.
The spokesperson noted that anyone who followed the entire sequence and context of what Tinubu said at the rally would know he directed his missiles against PDP and Atiku.
“Lest we forget, the PDP left the forex reserve at $28 billion by May 2015, when Buhari took over despite unprecedented revenue from crude oil.
“Even with the massive oil theft and low price of crude, until recently, President Buhari had built up the reserve to about $38 billion. The PDP in 1999 met the exchange rate at N85 to one US dollar in 1999 and left it at N230 in 2015.”
The APC campaign said the “futile attempt to misrepresent” Tinubu by the “mischievous PDP media” did not detract from his central message.
Onanuga quoted the flagbearer advising the people not to follow PDP and Atiku “because they don’t know the road”, saying it’s illogical that Tinubu would openly attack the Buhari administration.
Assuring that the APC and the President are strongly behind Tinubu, the director said all sponsored innuendos the “failed PDP and their media” hope to use to win the Federal 25th election will blow up in their faces.