By Ishaya Ibrahim
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Tuesday cautioned Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to “stop ridiculing his office by always bandying figures, peddling rumours and trending on false claims in an attempt to cover the rot and failures of the Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) administration.”
The opposition party said this in the wake of Osinbajo’s claim on Monday that former President Goodluck Jonathan left Nigeria with debt and ruined the economy due to the alleged corruption under his watch.
The Vice-President had during a lecture entitled, “Restructuring and the Nigerian federation,” delivered as part of activities marking the 40th anniversary of Association of Friends in Lagos, accused the Jonathan administration of throwing Nigeria into untold hardship, recession and debt.
But the PDP in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, accused Osinbajo of deceiving Nigerians and trying to deflate attention from the Buhari administration’s “empty scorecard.”
The statement read: “Instead of juggling figures, making false claims about the nation’s debt profile and playing to the camera, Prof. Osinbajo is challenged to present to Nigerians, the empty scorecard of APC failed administration, for which President Muhammadu Buhari has now lost his carriage as a leader.
“It is already a settled fact that the nation’s debt profile escalated under the profligate, uncreative and incompetent Buhari administration, which crippled our once robust economy, pushed it into recession, turned our nation from a growing economy to a debtor country and world’s poverty capital.
“Despite being busted, Vice President Osinbajo is labouring to deceive Nigerians by converting domestic borrowings in Naira, under the APC, to US dollars, so that the very high exchange rate will make it look smaller in dollars. This is despite verified figures even from agencies of Government showing an accumulation of 29.6% debt under Buhari as against the 20.14% under the Yar’Adua and Jonathan administration and the 0.44 % under the Obasanjo administration.
“Nigerians are therefore alarmed that Osinbajo, as a Professor of Law, cannot guarantee productivity, credibility, transparency and honesty in governance, but has rather allowed himself to be turned into a vendor of propaganda and false claims for a corrupt administration, now hanging on straws.
“Prof. Osinbajo is reminded that he is the head of Buhari’s bungling economic team and should therefore, not in anyway, parade himself as if he has no blame at all in the manifest failures of this administration.
“What Prof. Osinbajo has refused to come to terms with is that Nigerians already know that the Buhari administration, wherein he is a major actor, is the most corrupt in the history of our nation and that no amount of concealments, propaganda and false claims can erase that fact.
“Furthermore, Nigerians are no longer swayed by Prof. Osinbajo’s homilies and lip service to fiscal federalism, which he is now mouthing, just because the 2019 general election is around the corner.
“Instead of lending himself to be used to beguile Nigerians, Prof. Osinbajo should use the remaining days of the discredited APC administration to advise himself and President Buhari on life after office, especially as leaders, who manifestly failed their people, when they trusted them the most.”
