Harboursandport.com: Lagos - The presidential Candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has described the recently released manifesto of the Labour Party (LP) by his counterpart, Mr. Peter Obi as an attempt to copy Buhari's ongoing programme, noting that Obi did a bad job of it.
He said though the document is tall on graphics, it is however short on substance. In his first formal reaction to the document, Tinubu accused Obi of copying ongoing programmes of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC administration.
While he described Obi's policy document as full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, Tinubu said the LP candidate is vapid, intellectually arid, and a mere impostor, preying on the emotions of his gullible followers.
"We are glad that Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi finally released their much-awaited policy document after many contradictory statements on same.
"After perusing the document which is very high on graphics and demagogic rhetorics and short on substance, we have come to the conclusion that the document is empty and vacuous", Tinubu said in a statement issued Tuesday in Abuja and signed by the Director, Media and Publicity of his Campaign Council, Mr Bayo Onanuga.
According to Tinubu, Obi's document which is titled ‘It is Possible: Our Pact with Nigerians’, offers nothing refreshing to Nigerians and comes across as total anti-climax.
He said the subtitle ‘Action Plan’ was shamelessly parroted from the APC manifesto.
"The document Mr. Obi released is a poor imitation and regurgitation of what the current APC-led administration of President Muhammadu Buhari is doing. If anything, the document showed him as a man without honour, credibility and character because he is promising to do all the things he has railed against and de-legitimised in the past.
"We make bold to state that Mr. Obi lacks the mental acuity and rigour for the job he is asking Nigerians to entrust to him. He is surely not ready and prepared to be the President this great country deserves. And if indeed the Labour Party candidate paid for the wishy-washy document, he should ask for a refund", Tinubu counselled.
He said by now, many of Obi's "gullible followers" must have been utterly disappointed that their man did not offer them anything to be proud of after all the blusters and the initial leakage of the document, "which contains, strangely, 15 pages of the biographical sketches of Obi and his running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed".
"Mr. Peter Obi’s document contains no grand policy initiatives and options to excite right-thinking Nigerians. It was silent about how Obi wants to achieve his high falutin objectives. Instead, it will set alarm bells ringing in the South South and North East as Obi promises to ‘engineer the transition of Nigeria from a fossil fuel dependency to climate and eco-friendly energy use'.
"As expected, Obi’s document contains fallacies and false statistics.
"Obi claimed China moved 740 million people out of poverty. He understated the achievement and was silent about the period it took the Chinese Communist party to achieve this. China moved close to 800 million people out of poverty and it was achieved in 40 years. This makes the present APC government's plan to move 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 often repeated to his followers, is that Nigeria is a failed state. We wonder whether the Labour Party candidate sometimes bothers to check the meaning of a failed state and whether the country he dreams to govern falls into the mould of Yemen or Somalia, where institutions of government have lost total control of their societies.
"Another fallacy is Obi’s claim that Nigeria recorded modest gains between 1999-2015, the PDP years, even when all verifiable evidence points to the contrary.
"The Labour Party candidate simplistically diagnosed Nigeria’s problem as ‘elite capture, which is self-indicting as he and his running mate, who he styled ‘new breed’ are members.
"He claims incompetent leadership has divided the nation, playing up religious and ethnic sentiments. Another self-indictment as the hallmark of his campaign has been to jump from one church to the other, positioning himself as a ‘Christian candidate’ and inciting the church against the current APC government", he added.
According to Tinubu, Obi has no record of increasing revenue. He said as Governor for eight years in Anambra State, Obi could not grow the Internally Generated Revenue of the state by an ordinary 5% year on 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 could not change the fortunes of the state he led for 8years, he has no capacity to deliver on non-oil revenue for Nigeria.
"Only our candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has the record to grow revenue and significantly improve non-oil GDP because he set the standards in Lagos which the Federal government copied. Today, Lagos State is the 5th largest economy in Africa with over $150b GDP. The current APC-led Federal government has expanded the tax net in Nigeria from 10 million payers in 2016 to the current 41 million according to the Federal Inland Revenue Service. The Buhari administration alone brought 31 million new taxpayers into the net from 2016 to 2021, more than what all previous governments since independence have ever achieved.
Vapid candidate, intellectually arid
"Contrary to the image of a reformer and thinker Obi and his followers have created of him, we make bold to say that the Labour Party candidate is vapid, intellectually arid, a mere impostor who only seeks to play on the emotions of his gullible followers. Mr. Obi's policy document, if anything, has only exposed him as ill-prepared for the titanic task of governing a country the size of Nigeria. As a candidate, he has nothing new to offer Nigerians beyond hawking fake statistics and preying on the young people’s sentiments as a demagogue.
"Nigerians are warned to steer clear of Obi and his party. His whole presidential ambition is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, to paraphrase Williams Shakespeare in his play Macbeth", Tinubu stated.
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