The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council has criticized the manifesto of Labor Party (LP) candidate Peter Obi.
In a statement issued this Tuesday by its Director, Media and Advertising, Onanuga BayIn Abuja, the campaign council said that Obi’s policy paper is full of fallacious claims and cannot offer any refreshing relief to Nigerians.
The council said the manifesto, titled “It’s Possible: Our Deal with Nigerians,” was heavy on graphics, demagogic rhetoric and little substance.
He also claimed that the manifesto is a poor imitation of the achievements of the current APC-led administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, adding that Obi he subtly used the word ‘Action Plan’, which was supposedly taken from Tinubu’s manifesto.
The full statement says: “As a candidate, he (Obi) has nothing new to offer Nigerians beyond selling false statistics and preying on the sentiments of young people as a demagogue.
“We are pleased that LP and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, have finally released their long-awaited policy document after many conflicting statements on it.
“After carefully reading the document, which has a lot of graphics and demagogic rhetoric and little substance, we have come to the conclusion that the document is hollow and empty.
“Peter Obi’s document contains no major policy initiatives or options to excite well-thought-out Nigerians. He didn’t say anything about how Obi wanted to achieve his high goals.
“Instead, it will ring alarm bells in the south, south and north-east as Obi vows to ‘engineer Nigeria’s transition from a reliance on fossil fuels to climate and environmentally friendly energy use. ‘.
“Obi claimed that China lifted 740 million people out of poverty. He underestimated the achievement and kept silent about the length of time it took the Chinese Communist Party to achieve it.
“China lifted nearly 800 million people out of poverty and did it in 40 years. This makes the current APC government’s plan to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years more realistic than Obi’s rhetoric tends to suggest.
“One of the fallacies contained in the document, which Obi has repeated many times to his followers, is that Nigeria is a failed state. We wonder if the LP candidate sometimes bothers to check the meaning of a failed state and if the country he dreams of ruling falls into the mold of Yemen or Somalia, where governing institutions have lost full control of their societies.
“Another fallacy is Obi’s claim that Nigeria posted modest gains between 1999 and 2015, the PDP years, even when all verifiable evidence points to the contrary.
“The LP candidate simplistically diagnosed Nigeria’s problem as ‘elite’, which is self-deprecating, since he and his running mate, whom he called the ‘new generation’, are members.
“He claims that incompetent leadership has divided the nation, exaggerating religious and ethnic sentiments.
“Another hallmark of his campaign self-accusation has been church-hopping, positioning himself as a ‘Christian candidate’ and inciting the church against the current APC government.
“The document that Obi released is a poor imitation and regurgitation of what the current APC-led administration of President Muhammadu Buhari is doing.
“In any case, the document showed him as a man without honor, credibility and character because he promises to do all the things he has criticized and delegitimized in the past.
“We dare say that Obi lacks the mental acuity and rigor for the job that he is asking Nigerians to entrust to him. He surely is not ready and prepared to be the President that this great country deserves.
“And if indeed the LP candidate did pay for the bland document, they should ask for a refund for the following reasons:
“On security, in their document, Obi and his running mate promised to tackle insecurity and defeat Boko Haram, bandits and other violent crime by partnering with Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
“It is a pity that Obi and his party did not know that President Muhammadu Buhari did this during his first week in office as president in 2015 and has continued to strengthen regional cooperation.
“The Multinational Joint Military Task Force based in Ndjamena, Republic of Chad, is the result of the successful diplomatic trip to these neighboring countries, including the Republic of Benin.
“Through the Joint Military Task Force and our brave soldiers, Boko Haram and ISWAP have been driven out of Nigeria and permanently demoted and the entire Northeast is stable.
“Thousands of displaced people have returned to their communities to restart their social and economic activities.
“Peter Obi has nothing to offer in terms of security if he only promises what Buhari has been doing for over seven years.
“Anambra was one of the most insecure and volatile states riddled with criminals and kidnappers when Obi was governor for eight years with no solution until Governor Willie Obiano came along to tackle the problems head on.
On power: In a striking departure from his penchant for disingenuousness, Peter vowed to go ahead and complete the $2.5 billion FG-Siemens Power grid upgrade.
“Nigerians should remember that Peter Obi told the world he went to Egypt on a power study tour where Siemens told him nothing was happening in the power deal the company signed with the Nigerian government.
“Without apologizing for his deliberate mischief and lies, Peter Obi promises in his document to continue a project he said doesn’t exist. What a farce!
“In a show of complete lack of awareness, Obi also promised to complete the Dadinkowa hydroelectric project as part of his promise to solve Nigeria’s electricity problems without knowing that the same project has already been completed by the current administration of President Buhari.
“On infrastructure: Peter Obi promised to invest in infrastructure, especially rail, ports, broadband, roads, airports, etc.
“We find this laughable and blatant dishonesty just to fool Nigerians. This is the same Obi who has launched the cruelest attacks on President Buhari for having the courage to upgrade our broken critical infrastructure.
“For the past seven years, Obi’s chant has been that infrastructure doesn’t help the economy and eliminates poverty.
“While Chairman Buhari and the APC management believe that there can never be significant economic growth without the infrastructure to fuel it, we do not expect Obi, a warehouse and container economist, to understand the nexus between economic growth and infrastructure.
“It’s good that Obi has now seen the light on the social and economic imperatives of infrastructure, but he can’t be trusted to do anything.
“There is no signature infrastructure project that Obi can point to in Anambra State, where he ruled for eight years.
“On non-oil GDP and expansion of the fiscal net, APC-PCC said: “We are happy that Obi admitted in his paper that non-oil revenue has increased significantly under the Buhari-led APC administration and will continue to be successful. .
“Unfortunately, Obi has no history of increasing income. As governor for eight years in Anambra State, Obi was unable to increase the state’s internally generated revenue by the ordinary five percent per year.
“His current successor, Governor Charles Soludo, attested to Obi’s mediocre performance as Governor of Anambra in his recent widely published article.
“If Obi couldn’t turn around the fortunes of the state he led for eight years, he can’t deliver non-oil revenue for Nigeria.
“Only our candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has the record of increasing revenue and significantly improving non-oil GDP because he set the standards in Lagos that the federal government copied.
“Today, Lagos State is the fifth largest economy in Africa with a GDP of more than $150 billion.
“The current APC-led federal government has expanded the tax net in Nigeria from 10 million taxpayers in 2016 to the current 41 million according to the Federal Internal Revenue Service.
“The Buhari administration alone brought 31 million new contributors to the network between 2016 and 2021, more than all previous governments since independence have achieved.
“Obi’s policy paper, if anything, has only exposed him as ill-equipped for the herculean task of running a country the size of Nigeria.
“As a candidate, he has nothing new to offer Nigerians beyond trumpeting false statistics and preying on the sentiments of young people like a demagogue.
“All his presidential ambition is full of sound and fury, meaning nothing, to paraphrase Williams Shakespeare in his play Macbeth.”
