Obi should demand refund from those who wrote his ’empty manifesto’ – Tinubu Campaign Council

The Tinubu/Shettima presidential campaign council has accused the presidential candidate of Labour Party, (LP), Peter Obi of releasing a manifesto full of fallacies and false statistics.

Director Media and Publicity, APC Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga, in a statement on Tuesday, asked Obi to demand refund from the consultants who may have written the manifesto, if he indeed paid them.

In the statement titled, ‘Peter Obi’s Manifesto Offers Nothing New To Nigerians: APC PCC,’
Onanuga said the document was empty and promised nothing new to Nigerians.

He said; “We are glad that the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, 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 rhetoric and short on substance, we have come to the conclusion that the document is empty and vacuous.

“The document which is titled ‘It is Possible: Our Pact with Nigerians,’ offers nothing refreshing to Nigerians and comes across as total anti-climax. The subtitle ‘Action Plan’ was shamelessly parroted from Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s manifesto.

“By now, many of the 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.

“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 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.”