NEWS LEVERAGE

The All Progressive Congress APC has said President Bola Tinubu does not need the validation of the opposition to buttress the superlative and incomparable near midterm successes of the present administration.

In a post shared by Felix Morka, the National Publicity Secretary of the party on Thursday after Mr Peter Obi’s interview on Arise TV, he said Obi’s retort, ‘I would have done better as President’ is from a protracted bout of election failure, which he had failed to wake up from.

It also stated that the intended coalition of opposition in the country is of an empty barrel and assured that President Tinubu will continue to be focused on securing good governance and strong economic conditions.

The statement reads: “APC TO PETER OBI – PRESIDENT TINUBU’S SUCCESS IS UNDENIABLE, NEEDS NO OPPOSITION VALIDATION

During an interview on Prime Time on Arise Television on Tuesday, April 1, 2025, Peter Obi, former governor of Anambra State / presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 general elections, sauntered down his path-beaten tunnel accusing President Bola Tinubu of poor performance in implementing economic policy reform, claiming he would have done better.

To be honest, it was painful to watch Mr Obi as he laboured in vain to cobble together any sensible critical economic argument in the face of a stark and undeniable record of the progress of the administration’s economic reforms. Even Mr Obi’s trademark opportunistic sensationalization of transient difficulties that Nigerians have endured in patriotic support of the President’s bold and transformative economic plan availed no respite, as he floundered on national television, framing himself as a portrait of frustration and political desperation.

Mr Obi’s favourite retort, “I would have done better as president”, must be a symptom of a protracted bout of election failure-induced hangover from which he has not awakened to the reality that he is not the president. Like an unlicensed backseat driver who thinks himself to be a race car driver, Mr Obi needs to tame his bloated and deluded imagination.

Opposition politics is not about denying the administration’s many successes. It is about critiquing what may be wrong but affirming what is right. It is not about wholesale condemnation that is only intended to mislead and score cheap political gains. The steady progress of the Tinubu administration across sectors is undeniable and evident for all Nigerians to see.

It is hysterical that Mr Obi, who was governor of a failed and forgotten administration in Anambra state of only 21 local government areas would so brazenly boast of his capacity to govern Africa’s largest democracy. Obi bequeathed a sordid legacy of economic stagnation,  infrastructural decay, ecological disaster, and religious polarization.

Both as former Governor of Lagos and now as President, Tinubu is a dogged achiever, bold and unwavering in tackling and transforming difficult challenges into opportunities. As he did for Lagos, President Tinubu is now doing for Nigeria with the economy rebounding steadily, posting productivity-enhanced trade surpluses in successive quarters, with a 3.6 per cent economic growth forecast for the current fiscal year; with a fast expanding foreign reserve; with revamped and operational local refineries; with food inflation on the decline; with a successful harmonization of multiple exchanges rates that now supports increased foreign direct investments and flow of remittances into the economy; and with a reasonably stable forex market.

The administration also has posted in its success column the cleared $ 7 billion forex backlog, and Ways and Means debt of over $ 30 billion; with a reduced debt serving ratio from 98 per cent to about 64 per cent; with increased oil production of over 1.8 Mbps, surpassing the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quota of 1.5mbpd for the first time in many years; with a repositioned stock exchange market that is now one of the most profitable in the world; with a vastly expanding Agricultural, Mine and Steel, Manufacturing, Creative and several other sub-sectors of the economy, in a push to increase the non-oil contribution to GDP; and with the Chatham House only recently adjudging the nation’s economy as the most competitive it has been in 25 years. Whereas global institutions and experts are applauding the unfolding silent economic revolution ably led by President Tinubu, Obi and his co-opposition drummers of empty partisan barrels continue to deny his superlative and incomparable near-midterm successes and achievements.
Tinubu remains undistracted and focused on securing good governance and improved economic conditions

Felix Morka

National Publicity Secretary