The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 general elections and former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, has continued, unabashedly, to showcase his obsessive devotion to self-promotion against the best interest of Nigeria.
Mr. Obi’s latest statement on the country’s economic situation is an admixture of half truths, blatant distortions and misinformation calculated to mobilize outrage against the All Progressives Congress (APC) government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
His warped conclusion that Nigeria’s economic crisis was caused by nine years of APC-led administration is a highly revisionist, dishonest, distorted and deliberately misleading assessment of the country’s economic trajectory in the last decade. He opined, rather mischievously, that no efforts were being made by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration to tackle poverty and unemployment in the country.
The facts tell a far more complex and different story. The country’s economic decline began under the watch of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with GDP growth plummeting from 7.98% in 2010 to 2.79% in 2015. And since 2015, the global oil price crash, geopolitical tensions, climate change, global COVID pandemic and rising population have all taken a toll on Nigeria’s economy that is almost entirely dependent on drastically reduced oil export earnings.
The growth recorded during the PDP years was due entirely to high price of crude oil and increased government spending that it supported.
It is noteworthy that between 2007-2014, Nigeria earned $531.2 billion under the PDP, compared to $287.8 billion under APC between 2015-2022. This drastically reduced export earnings under the APC administration was even further stretched thin by the country’s population surge from 184 million in 2015 to 229 million in 2024.
Despite the huge revenues available to it, successive PDP administrations neglected to address underlying structural challenges and distortions in the economy leaving the country vulnerable to economic shocks and volatility. Had the PDP undertaken a sustained programme of economic reform as President Tinubu is currently engaged, Nigeria’s economic situation would be far better than it is today.
But in his selfish political desperation, Obi will never acknowledge the complexity of the causation of our economic challenges but would rather attempt to scapegoat the APC administration for all of the country’s economic ills while turning a blind eye to the bold and thoughtful policy interventions of President Tinubu’s administration.
The administration’s focused and determined efforts to tackle the country’s challenges through diversification, massive infrastructure development, social welfare, agricultural revolution and sustained improvements in national security are certain to accelerate Nigeria’s resurgence, create jobs and lift millions of our people out of poverty.
Quite contrary to Obi’s jaundiced and gloomy analysis, in the last one year alone, the country has attracted over $20 billion into the economy, aside recording an all-time high N6.52 trillion trade surplus in the first quarter of 2024 marking a positive shift from a long history of trade deficits.
Despite clearing the backlog of the foreign exchange debts owed foreign airlines and other economic actors by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the nation’s foreign reserves has continued to expand, hitting upwards of $34 billion, the highest in recent times. Capital inflow into the country increased by 66.27 per cent this year alone.
Notable financial experts and the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report that for the first time in our economic history, the All Share Index (ASI) of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) crossed the 100,000 benchmark this year, making the Nigerian Stock Exchange currently about the most profitable capital market in the world with a return on investment (RoI) as high as 22.90 per cent.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that the nation’s economy will have a 3.1 per cent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in 2024, one of the one of the highest projections for any African country.
Initiatives such as the Credit Corps, Students Loan, the newly approved minimum wage, the construction of 700-kilometre Lagos-Calabar coastal highway, and many more are tailor-made by the President Tinubu’s to combat poverty and expand economic opportunities for Nigerians.
Mr. Obi is a loquacious and disruptive back seat driver who has assigned himself an ignoble role of an embittered loser and spoiler. Economic challenges and hardship are a stark reality of most countries of the world today, both developed and developing. It is an existential condition that must be tackled and transformed. This is an arduous task that requires collective patriotic collaboration.
Mr. Obi must know that inflaming passion and mobilizing outrage through false and manipulative narratives are not legitimate tools of opposition politics. Expecting President Tinubu to accomplish total transformation of Nigeria in one year, a feat he failed miserably to accomplish in eight years as Governor of Anambra State, is the height of disgraceful hypocrisy.
President Tinubu remains focused and committed to building lasting blocks of economic prosperity for Nigeria.
*Morka is the National Publicity Secretary, All Progressives Congress (APC)
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