PDP Slams Lai, Stop Selling ‘Unverifiable Statistics’ To Nigerians

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has urged Information Minister, Alh Lai Mohammed, to stop selling “faulty and unverifiable statistics” about Nigeria’s economy to unsuspecting citizens.

Speaking in a statement on Thursday by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP said no one but President Muhammadu Buhari should be blamed for the country’s alleged collapsed economy.

The opposition party was reacting to earlier statements credited to Mohammed and alleged efforts being made by the Buhari regime to censor the media.

The minister had said, “The way a section of the media is reporting the challenges facing the country today does not reflect that understanding. They are making a corrective administration to look like the culprit, to give the impression that the rain started eating us in Nigeria only from 29 May 2015, to play down the challenges that this administration has faced and which it is successfully tackling.

“For example, we did not get to where we are today in just three years. It has taken successive decades of bad governance, unbridled corruption, lack of probity, a culture of impunity and a near state of anarchy. These are the ills this administration inherited and which it has set out to tackle. And this is what the media must reflect in their reporting,” he had said.

Reacting, however, the PDP said: “Nigerians were shocked to watch the Minister of Information attempting to censor the media and sell unverifiable statistics to the media when a TV Continental (TVC) team visited his office on Tuesday.

“We hope the minister saw the faces of his audience as he was reeling out his faulty statistics.

“Nigerians know that the APC has failed and that the Buhari-led Presidency is directly responsible for the collapse of our economy, which was thriving under the PDP.

“They know that the torrents started buffeting the nation from May 29, 2015, and no amount of propaganda and futile efforts to censor the media by the APC will change the facts.

“While we note the minister’s snap that the media should contextualize their reporting, we ask; how else should the media contextualize the sudden collapse of the economy with the naira tumbling from N197/I USD in 2015 when PDP handed over power, to N360-N400/1USD, without placing the blame at the doorsteps of President Muhammadu Buhari and his dysfunctional APC?

“How else should the media contextualize the fact that under the Buhari Government, over 8 million Nigerians lost their jobs between 2016 to 2017; 16 million were unemployed, 18 million more were underemployed, while another 27.44 million refused to work in 2016 for various reasons related to frustration in the polity?

“How should the media contextualize the soaring costs of food, the rise in inflation rate from the N13.7% in May 2015 to the current 15.37%; the rise in fuel price from N86.50 under the PDP to N300-N400 per liter under the APC; the escalating of our foreign debt to $15.2bn, representing a 40% increase under President Buhari’s three years in office in addition to the pile-up of domestic debt which has scared away many contractors off their sites?

“How would the APC want the media to contextualize the slaughtering of Nigerians in various parts of the country by marauders while its Federal Government refused to take any concrete steps to bring the perpetrators to book?

“Sadly, instead of the APC to be sober and remorseful for its failures and seek help from well-meaning Nigerians, it is busy reeling out false indices while monitoring phone calls of journalists and other Nigerians under the guise of fight against hate speech.

“In all, the facts speak for themselves, the APC has wrecked our nation and its resort to propaganda and false indices will not help as Nigerians are now rallied with the repositioned PDP, ahead of the 2019 general elections, to rescue and return the prosperous days when our citizens once held their heads tall among other citizens of the world.”