A group, Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has described opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as a perfidious liar that holds truth in perpetual contempt.
A statement by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju, and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, said that for the PDP to twist truth on the Nation’s economy against the government of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is shameless.
The statement referred to the rot painted by Lamido Sanusi, a man the party (PDP) removed from office as Governor of the Central Bank after he revealed the extent of rot.
“In its latest efforts to manipulate economic facts and figures, the PDP claimed that it handed over a robust economy with a Fitch B+rating and a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $574bn, but we are bold to say that the claim is a barefaced lie.
“The truth that anyone is free to fact-check is that, as at March 2015, Nigeria’s economy had a Fitch BB-rating while the GDP was $492.437bn which was largely driven by years of oil windfall until the slump of the last quarter of 2014.
“And for the avoidance of doubt, the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has now grown the GDP from the figure he inherited to $514.076bn and that is in spite of a global pandemic.
“So on that basis alone, the former ruling party’s position was anchored on a deliberate distortion of facts by people who did little or nothing to structure the country’s economy to make it more resilient until President Buhari assumed office.”
BMO also questioned the party’s allegation that the Buhari administration has erased all the gains of debt repayment it achieved.
“This is another brazen attempt to hoodwink unsuspecting Nigerians with the same impunity it operated while in power at the centre for 16 years.
“What PDP handed over to the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration after 16 years was actually an economy with a public debt stock of $63bn, even after the so-called debt repayment, a JVC cash call debt of $6 billion, local contractors’ debt running of N3 trillion, a foreign reserve that was depleted from $64.3 billion in 2008 to $29 billion and an Excess Crude account of $2 billion from $19.5 billion, not to talk of a situation where 27 states could not pay workers’ salaries.
“And in terms of infrastructure, the country had more bridges and railway projects on paper than on ground, and no Nigerian should forget in a hurry the President’s famous rhetorical question ‘where is the Power’ after the previous PDP administration had spent in excess of $16 billion on power infrastructure.
“Lest we forget, the former CBN governor on whose tail coats the opposition shamelessly hung on to, had in 2013 publicly drawn attention to the disappearance of $20 billion in oil revenue from the nation’s coffers under the then PDP administration, an allegation that earned him instant removal from office.
“We also need to remind the opposition party that it has yet to respond to another Sanusi claim that the country lost $1billion each month in the Jonathan years.
“In case PDP leadership missed it, the claim was made on an American news channel, PBS Newshour and was published on the network’s YouTube channel on December 2 2015.
“So we find it disingenuous that the PDP could measure economic prosperity with the price of foreign rice brands rather than on infrastructure that are springing up daily across the country, and an environment that has made Nigeria, Africa’s largest producer of rice.”
BMO urged Nigerians to be wary of PDP’s regular efforts at rigging numbers and distorting facts in order to paint the Buhari administration black.
