The All Progressives Congress (APC) has rejected claims made by Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, regarding President Bola Tinubu’s administration. The ruling party insists that Tinubu’s achievements are evident and do not require validation from opposition figures.
APC’s National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, issued a statement on Wednesday dismissing Obi’s remarks as baseless. Obi, in a recent interview on Arise Television, criticized Tinubu’s economic policies, arguing that he would have handled them better. He also linked the ongoing internal crisis within the Labour Party to the actions of the Tinubu administration.
Morka responded by noting Tinubu’s accomplishments, particularly in economic reforms. He pointed out that the administration has successfully cleared a $7 billion foreign exchange backlog and managed over $30 billion in Ways and Means debt. He further stated that the country’s debt service ratio had been reduced from 98% to around 64%. Additionally, he noted that oil production had increased to over 1.8 million barrels per day, surpassing the OPEC quota of 1.5 million barrels for the first time in years.
“To be honest, it was painful to watch Mr. Obi as he laboured in vain to cobble together any sensible critical economic argument in the face of the stark and undeniable record of progress of the administration’s economic reforms,” Morka stated.
“Even Mr. Obi’s trademark opportunistic sensationalisation of transient difficulties that Nigerians have endured in patriotic support of the President’s bold and transformative economic plan availed no respite, as he floundered on national television, framing himself as a portrait of frustration and political desperation,” he added.
“Mr. Obi’s favourite retort, ‘I would have done better as president,’ must be a symptom of a protracted bout of election failure-induced hangover from which he has not awakened to the reality that he is not the president. Like an unlicensed back seat driver that thinks himself to be a race car driver, Mr. Obi needs to tame his bloated and deluded imagination,” Morka said.
“Opposition politics is not about denying the administration’s many successes. It is about critiquing what may be wrong but affirming what is right. It is not about wholesale condemnation that is only intended to mislead and score cheap political gains. The steady progress of the Tinubu administration across sectors is undeniable and evident for all Nigerians to see,” the statement read.
“It is hysterical that Mr. Obi, who was governor of a failed and forgotten administration in Anambra state of only 21 local government areas, would so brazenly boast of his capacity to govern Africa’s largest democracy. Obi bequeathed a sordid legacy of economic stagnation, infrastructural decay, ecological disaster, and religious polarisation,” Morka stated.
“Both as former Governor of Lagos State and now as President, Tinubu is a dogged achiever, bold and unwavering in tackling and transforming difficult challenges into opportunities. As he did for Lagos, President Tinubu is now doing for Nigeria with the economy rebounding steadily, posting productivity-enhanced trade surpluses in successive quarters, with a 3.6 percent economic growth forecasted for the current fiscal year; with a fast expanding foreign reserve; with revamped and operational local refineries; with food inflation on the decline; with a successful harmonisation of multiple exchange rates that now supports increased foreign direct investments and flow of remittances into the economy; and with a reasonably stable forex market,” he continued.
“The administration also has posted in its success column the cleared $7 billion forex backlog, and Ways and Means debt of over $30 billion; with a reduced debt serving ratio from 98 percent to about 64 percent; with increased oil production in excess of 1.8 mbpd, surpassing the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quota of 1.5 mbpd for the first time in many years; with a repositioned stock exchange market that is now one of the most profitable in the world; with a vastly expanding Agricultural, Mine and Steel, Manufacturing, Creative and several other sub-sectors of the economy, in a push to increase the non-oil contribution to GDP; and with the Chatham House only recently adjudging the nation’s economy as the most competitive it has been in 25 years,” he added.
“Whereas global institutions and experts are applauding the unfolding silent economic revolution ably led by President Tinubu, Obi and his co-opposition drummers of empty partisan barrels continue to deny President Tinubu’s superlative and incomparable near mid-term successes and achievements,” Morka concluded.
