By Ismail Mudashir
The Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) of the APC, yesterday, said the presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, and his running mate, Peter Obi, lied six times during a town hall live television programme: “The Candidates”.
Spokesperson of the PCC/APC, Festus Keyamo, enumerated the six lies in a statement he issued yesterday.
“Yesterday (Wednesday) Nigerians watched with shock and dismay the barefaced lies and outright dishonest claims of Atiku and Obi in the television show tagged: ‘The Candidates’. Let us tell Nigerians some of the lies they told in that programme, which a simple fact-check will easily expose,” he said.
Keyamo said Atiku’s claim that at handover in May, 2015, the country’s GDP growth rate was six per cent was wrong.
“Fact Checked Truth: It is a well-documented fact that at handover, the GDP growth rate was 2.35 per cent. The economy was on a free fall as the GDP growth rate had dropped for three consecutive quarters,” he said.
He said the claim that recession was caused by the APC government was a lie.
“Fact Checked Truth: With a consistent and rapid drop of our GDP, their Coordinating Minister of the Economy at that time, Okonjo Iweala, a former Central Bank Governor Prof. Charles Soludo, and the Central Bank Governor at the time, now Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, warned the PDP government and Nigerians that we were headed for a recession,” he said.
“Obi’s claim that out-of-school children grew to 13.5 million under this administration was a lie.
“The figure of 13.2 million out-of-school children was a 2015 survey by UNICEF. An alarm was raised by several global bodies then because the figure had grown from 10.5 million in 2010 to 13.2 million in 2015 despite record earnings of the government at that time. In other words, Peter Obi’s claim is self-indicting,” he said.
He said the claims by Atiku that as a customs officer, there was nothing wrong at that time with setting up a company that had dealings in the ports that were under customs supervision was untrue.
“Truth: The Code of Conduct for public officers was first enshrined in the 1979 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Atiku Constitution came into operation.
“According to Section 1 of the Fifth Schedule to the 1979 Constitution, a public officer shall not put himself in a position where his personal interest conflicts with his duties and responsibilities. By establishing a company involved in port-related business at a time when he was an officer in the Nigeria Customs Service charged with managing the ports, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar definitely put himself in a position where his personal (business) interest conflicted with his duties as a public officer.
