Minister Lai mocks PDP, others, says sorry, I know news of recession exit hit you hard

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on Friday said he was certain that the news of Nigeria’s exit from recession hit the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and other Nigerians who doubted the report hard.
He asked them to quickly recover and embrace the good news.

The PDP and some Nigerians had faulted the report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) that Nigeria had exited the recession it fell into for the last two years.

They argued that the report was a plot by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to deceive Nigerians ahead of the 2019 general elections.

Read also: PDP to Minister Lai, APC is a failure, 2019 election’ll be a walkover against it

But Mohammed, when he received Broadcast Media Editors who paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja on Friday that politicizing the nation’s triumph over recession is a disservice to the people of Nigeria.

He said, “To naysayers, I will say: This issue should not be politicized. An issue that affects the welfare of our citizens should not be toyed with. Let us all appreciate what this administration has done in returning our economy to the path of positive growth and then support and encourage it to do more.

”Trying to downplay what has been achieved is bad politics. I know this good news of our emergence from recession has hit the naysayers very hard. But they should recover quickly and embrace the good news. Sorry, but it can neither be denied nor wished away.”

He further said that some critics even claimed that getting out of recession is mere statistics and does not mean anything, even though it is the same statistics that was used to say that Nigeria had slipped into recession in Q2 2016.

According to him, now that Nigeria has emerged from recession, the administration will sustain and build on what it did to get the economy out of recession through sustained policy interventions in various sectors.

Mohammed also gave the assurance that government will continue to improve on power generation, which he said has increased from 2,690MW to over 6,000MW.

Earlier, the convener of the Broadcast Media Editors, Mr. Tijjani Yunusa, pledged support of the partnership of the group with the Federal Government in its effort to develop the country.

The details of the meeting were made known to newsmen in a statement released by the SA to the Information Minister, Segun Adeyemi.

 

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