Obi’s Manifesto Shows He’s Ill-prepared to Govern Nigeria, Says APC Presidential Campaign

Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

The  Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has said that the recent manifesto released by the presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi has shown that he was ill-prepared for the titanic task of governing a country the size of Nigeria. 

The Director, Media and  Publicity of the PCC, Bayo Onanuga in a statement issued Tuesday said as a candidate, Obi has nothing new to offer Nigerians beyond ‘hawking fake statistics’ and preying on the young people’s sentiments as a demagogue.

He noted that after perusing the document which he said was very high on graphics and demagogic rhetorics and short on substance, the campaign council had come to the conclusion that the document was empty and vacuous.

Onanuga stressed that the document which was titled ‘It is Possible: Our Pact with Nigerians’, offers nothing refreshing to Nigerians and comes across as total anti-climax. 

According to him, The subtitle ‘Action Plan’ was shamelessly parroted from Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s manifesto.

Onanuga said: “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.

“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.”

Onanuga insisted that Obi’s document contains no grand policy initiatives and options to excite  right thinking Nigerians. 

He said the document  was silent about how Obi wants to achieve his high objectives, saying Instead, it would 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”.

Onanuga pointed out that as expected, Obi’s document contains fallacies and false statistics.

He added: “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.”

Onanuga said the Labour Party candidate simplistically diagnosed Nigeria’s problem as ‘elite capture’, which he said was  self-indicting as he and his running mate, who he styled ‘new breed’ are members.