PDP accuses Buhari of plot to conjure false statistics to cover his govt failures

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has alleged moves by the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency to start conjuring false statistics to cover its incompetence and failures in governance.

The opposition party was responding to Buhari’s discrediting of data presented by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Nigeria.

Buhari had during a meeting with the newly inaugurated Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC) on Wednesday, described assessment of Nigeria by World Bank and IMF as wild estimates that hardly reflect facts on the ground.

But in a statement Thursday by its national publicity secretary, the PDP said it was shocking for President 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 party said, “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.

“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, therefore, challenged the Buhari Presidency to name a particular statistics from any credible international organisation that distorted facts on the reality of the failures of his administration.

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It held 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 party said.

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