Tinubu lists fallacies in Obi’s manifesto, says document empty

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Tinubu lists fallacies in Obi’s manifesto, says document empty

The presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, has said the campaign manifesto of his challenger on the platform of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, is “empty and vacuous”.

Tinubu, who listed out some fallacies in Obi’s manifesto, said the 62-page document, titled, ‘It’s Possible: Our Pact with Nigerians’, has nothing to offer to Nigerians.

The two-term former governor of Lagos State said this via a statement issued on Tuesday by the Director, Media and Publicity APC Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga.

Onanuga stated that one of the fallacies in Obi’s manifesto was the declaration of Nigeria as a failed state by the LP presidential candidate.

He noted that the former governor of Anambra State did not know the meaning of a failed state.

According to him, another fallacy in Obi’s manifesto was the LP presidential candidate’s claim that Nigeria recorded modest gains between 1999-2015, during the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-led government.

The PCC spokesperson further described the manifesto as “a poor imitation and regurgitation” of what President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is doing.

Onanuga stated: “By now, many of the gullible followers must have been utterly disappointed that their man didn’t 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 of 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.

“In fact, 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.”

Speaking further on Obi’s plans to tackle insecurity in Nigeria by partnering with Cameroon, Chad, and Niger, Onaniuga said President Buhari did this within his first week in office as President in 2015, noting that he has continued to strengthen regional cooperation.

He stated that Obi has nothing to offer on security if “he is only promising what Buhari has been doing for over 7 years.”

While speaking on the LP presidential candidate’s promise to complete the $2.5billion FG-Siemens Power network upgrade, the APC campaign spokesman said: “Nigerians should recall Peter Obi told the world that he went to Egypt on a study tour of power where he was told by Siemens that nothing is happening on the power agreement the company signed with Nigerian government.

“Without apologising for his lies and deliberate mischief, Peter Obi is promising in his document to continue with a project he said does not exist. What a travesty!

“In a show of total lack of awareness, Obi also promised to complete Dadinkowa hydropower project as part of his promise to solve electricity problems in Nigeria without knowing that same project has since been completed by the current administration of President Buhari.”

Onanuga added that Obi “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.”

The Star