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President Muhammadu Buhari

 

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Organisation (PPCO) has tackled President Muhammadu Buhari demanding an apology from him for allegedly making false claims in his Wednesday’s budget presentation to the National Assembly.

 

The Director, Media and Publicity of PPCO, Kola Ologbondiyan, said in a statement issued in Abuja on Saturday that the organisation noted with consternation, “the deliberate reliance on falsehood” by President Buhari in the 2019 budget presentation.

 

The campaign spokesman said Nigerians and the international community were shocked as fact-checks revealed that a large part of the claims made by Mr. President, particularly on projects he claimed to have completed, were outright falsehood, apparently designed by the Buhari Presidency to mislead the nation and the world.

 

He observed that the fact-checks showed that most of the projects which Mr President claimed to have been completed did not have the least attention of his administration, if they existed at all.

 

He added: “Of particular reference is President Buhari’s claim that he had completed the Ugwashi-Uku Dam in Delta State, a claim which casts a long shadow on his assertions, as the project had been abandoned since 2015.

“In fact, the dam, which President Buhari barefacedly said he had completed, is overgrown with weeds, while the road leading to the complex has collapsed.

“The scenario is mostly the same in other capital projects, particularly those in remote parts of the country, which, perhaps, our dear President thought Nigerians would not fact-check on.

“This explained why federal lawmakers booed him during his budget presentation, a development that is unprecedented in our national history.

“In his desperate plot to nudge up a trajectory of dismal performance, President Buhari resorted to falsification of achievements, thereby violating his oath of office, the oath of allegiance to the people of Nigeria and corrupted our national performance indices.

“This elevation of lies to a standard practice of governance is embarrassing and the PPCO completely condemns it.

“All over the world, leaders of nations are expected to be truthful in their dealings, but this is no longer the case as it concerns our dear nation.

 

“While we do not want to call Mr. President a liar, we urge him to tell Nigerians, in his own words, what he would call a person who claims to have done what he did not do, particularly, given his perception by a minority few as Mr. Integrity.”

 

The PPCO invited Nigerians to note that since fact-checks exposed the myriads of false claims in Mr. President’s budget speech, the Presidency had not offered any form of explanation.

“This goes to show that the claims were deliberate and intended to mislead,” he stated further, adding that “Nigerians will recall that the PDP had always alerted that the Buhari Presidency had nothing to offer Nigerians except lies, falsehood, deception, beguilement, intimidation, harassment, hunger, starvation and disobedience of court orders.”

 

The PPCO, therefore, charged President Buhari to apologise to Nigerians and get his handlers to turn a new leaf “and save his reputation from further nose-diving within the few months he has left in office as the President.”