The All Progressives Congress (APC) has claimed that President Bola Tinubu’s administration has been unquestionably successful, making opposition validation superfluous.
In a statement released on Wednesday, APC National Publicity Secretary Felix Morka attacked the Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi’s, claims of superior governance as “hysterical”.
During an appearance on Arise Television’s Prime Time broadcast on Tuesday, Obi questioned Tinubu’s economic policy initiatives, claiming that he could have implemented them better.
He also blamed the Labour Party’s internal crisis on the Tinubu administration.
Morka responded by highlighting the Tinubu administration’s achievements, which included clearing a $7 billion foreign exchange backlog and addressing over $30 billion in Ways and Means debt.
He also mentioned that the debt service ratio had been reduced from 98% to roughly 64% and that oil output had increased to more than 1.8 million barrels per day, exceeding OPEC’s 1.5 million barrels per day cap for the first time in many 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 backseat 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.
The APC reiterated that Tinubu remained committed to ensuring good government and improving economic conditions for all Nigerians.
“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 per cent 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.
