By Seyi Babalola
The All Progressives Congress, APC, has labeled the 2023 Labour Party, LP, presidential candidate, Peter Obi, as a brazen liar.
The APC said that Obi’s flagrant falsehoods and lies were designed to incite indignation against President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
Felix Morka, the APC’s National Publicity Secretary, said Obi’s claim that Nigeria’s economic problem was caused by the party’s nine-year rule was deceptive and false.
In a statement he signed, Morka said the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was responsible for the country’s economic crisis and not APC.
The statement by Morka reads partly: “The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 general elections and former Governor of Anambra State, Mr Peter Obi, has continued, unabashedly, to showcase his obsessive devotion to self promotion against the best interest of Nigeria.
“Mr Obi’s latest statement on the country’s economic situation is an admixture of half truths, blatant distortions and misinformation calculated to mobilize outrage against the All Progressives Congress (APC) government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“His 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 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.”
