The All-Progressives Congress (APC) calls Peter Obi’s New Year statement “misleading and an attempt to score cheap political points”.
Obi was the Labour Party’s presidential contender for the 2023 elections.
In his New Year’s greeting to Nigerians, Obi chastised President Bola Tinubu while voicing significant worries about institutional corruption, mismanagement, poverty, suffering, and an increasing debt profile.
According to the former governor of Anambra, corruption is well ingrained in government, and nepotism has become the norm under Tinubu’s watch.
He also asked “vigorous, positive actions” from the administration to provide relief to Nigerians.
However, in a counterstatement on Thursday, APC spokesperson Felix Morka claimed Obi’s judgement contradicted all evidence indicating that the nation’s economy is recovering across all sectors.
Morka accused Obi and members of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of repeatedly attempting to provoke public discontent against the Tinubu administration.
The APC accused Obi of portraying himself as “a leading doomsayer, omniscient, and philosopher’s stone” despite failing to make “meaningful achievements during his eight-year tenure as governor in Anambra state”.
“In reality, 18 months later, the economy, under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration has shown a steady record of progress,” the statement reads.
“Despite these and other initial beneficial outcomes of ongoing reforms, the administration is doubling its effort to ensure their fullest benefits for the transformation of our country.
“It is a thing of irony that Obi, who now arrogates to himself to be omniscient and philosopher’s stone, when it comes to our nation’s challenges, left no record of significant achievement, let alone transformation of any kind, in his eight-year tenure as Governor of Anambra State.
“Like his co-travellers in the PDP, Obi’s obsessive pessimism and endless but futile effort to incite public outrage against the administration is borne out of the realization that Tinubu is unwittingly cementing their political irrelevance by his visionary and full-throttle reform.
“Under the banner of the Renewed Hope Agenda, President Tinubu is dutifully turning our nation’s fortunes around. We urge Nigerians to remain confident of better days ahead.”
The ruling party added that Tinubu’s goal is to reduce inflation from 34 percent to 15 percent in 2025.
“With the vigour in the administration’s war on corruption, evidenced by ongoing investigations and trial of well-heeled Nigerians, Obi’s pontification on the urgent need to tame corruption is a clear case of carrying coal to Newcastle,” the party added.