The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) House of Representatives caucus of trumpeting opposition lies and falsehood in its criticism of President Muhammadu Buhari’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
The minority caucus had through its leader Ndudi Elumelu claimed in its reaction that the President’s speech did not reflect the country’s current realities.
BMO said in a statement signed by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke that the opposition lawmakers were not truthful in their assessment of the points raised by President Buhari in his speech.
“We have noted how the PDP caucus in the House sought to rubbish the President’s 18-minute speech at UNGA with its ill thought-out reaction to his position on Nigeria’s COVID-19 response, the war against terror and other issues.
“Like everything from the opposition rank, it is filled with lies and innuendoes that are at variance with international plaudits that have trailed the manner that the Buhari administration handled the pandemic in Nigeria.
“We make bold to say that when the President said the country’s efforts to contain the virus ‘have been rewarded with moderate success, he was not only being truthful but also modest judging from how the European Union, UN and the World Health Organisation (WHO) had separately hailed the country’s response at the height of the pandemic.
“In fact, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres held a virtual news conference in April 2020 where he singled out Nigeria as one of the few developing countries which, according to him, showed remarkable capacity by setting up emergency hospitals. This is exactly what the President alluded to in his UNGA speech when he said ‘Nigeria built isolation centres and emergency hospital wards in record time’ amongst other pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical measures taken.
“So we wonder why PDP lawmakers prefer to play the ostrich and pretend that they did not know that the Buhari administration indeed established field hospitals as well as expanded facilities in existing hospitals at a time the international community was still hailing the country’s COVID-19 response so much so that Nigeria was ranked 4th in a global normalcy index by The Economist magazine”, it added.
BMO also dismissed the minority caucus’ position on the war against insurgency as an affront to the great work that the military and the Federal Government had done in recent years to stem the tide of Boko Haram insurgency.
“We were not really surprised to hear a group of PDP members lampoon the military because it is in the character of the opposition party to mock officers and men of the armed forces in the name of politics.
“Yes, the President was right when he said the insurgents have been degraded to the extent of launching attacks on soft targets. This is a far cry from when the terrorists were bold enough to launch three major suicide bombings in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in the PDP years. But today, no fewer than 8,000 Boko Haram fighters and their families have surrendered to troops in the aftermath of massive air and ground assault on their hideouts in the Sambisa Forest and the fringes of Lake Chad.
“This is mainly as a result of the massive upgrade of weapons and platforms available to the armed forces for the first time in more than 30 years, as well as improved welfare for military personnel.
“We know that PDP elements will not stop speaking on external borrowings which as at March 2021 stood at $87bn but we wont stop reminding them that the Buhari administration inherited a national debt stock of $63bn which should give all Nigerians an insight into what the current government actually incurred.
“We also make bold to say that there are proofs of projects that are tied to the loans taken on President Buhari’s watch and challenge the PDP lawmakers to provide evidence of what the former ruling party did with the loans that previous administrations left behind in 2015.”
BMO reaffirmed its stance that President Buhari would leave the country better than he met it, regardless of the political antics of opposition elements.