| President Muhammadu Buhari |
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has alerted Nigerians of moves by the Buhari Presidency to start conjuring what it called false statistics to cover its incompetence and failures in governance.
The party described as shocking for President Muhammadu Buhari to resort to self-applause and discrediting of development statistics from credible independent organizations simply because they exposed the rots and failures of his administration.
The PDP said that the nation was again embarrassed when President Buhari directed his newly constituted Presidential Economic Advisory Council as well as the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs not to work with statistics from independent agencies, but to rely only on self-sourced data.
In a statement on Thursday by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP said: “Our party holds that such is a veiled approval for agencies to cook-up statistics, distort facts and fabricate false performance indices for the Buhari Presidency, a situation that will worsen our national challenges and return our nation to a pariah state.
“The PDP challenges the Buhari Presidency to name a particular statistics from any credible international organization that distorted facts on the reality of the failures of his administration.
“The PDP laments that the fact that Mr. President announced this disturbing directive while inaugurating his Economic Advisory Council, casts a huge shadow on the credibility of the council and the reliability of the statistics it eventually comes up with.
“Furthermore, the directive has equally eroded the credibility of any statistics that may be presented by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs.
“The PDP rejects as offensive, President Buhari’s assertions that there are impacts of good governance in the rural areas, when in reality, our rural areas are plagued by excruciating poverty and despondency. Such assertion only confirms that President Buhari is completely out of sync with reality and insensitive to the plights of Nigerians.
“Moreover, Nigerians are daily confronted with the the ugly reality of the failures of the Buhari administration and do not need any government statistics to show them that our economy is on its knees; that there is no food on their tables; that they cannot afford their basic needs; that our schools are dilapidated; that there are no drugs and equipment in the hospitals and that our roads have all collapsed.
“Indeed, Nigerians do not need government statistics to know that the cost of food has continued to skyrocket; that there are no jobs for the teeming youth; that businesses and industries are collapsing; that crime, criminality and bloodletting have escalated; that compatriots are committing suicide while others are leaving our country in droves, and that the Buhari-led APC administration has remained incompetent, corrupt and insensitive to their plight.
“The party therefore urges the Buhari Presidency to accept its failures and seek help instead of compounding the problems it brought with fabricated statistics”.