Category: General News

By Danladi Ahmed

The Democratic Front (TDF) has disagreed with what it describes as mere fallacy and inaccurate assertions by the candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 presidential election, Mr Peter Obi in a TV interview in which he claimed that he could have performed better than President Bola Tinubu in handling the economy, if he were President in the last two years.

In a statement signed by the Chairman, Mallam Danjuma Muhammad and Secretary, Chief Wale Adedayo, the group stated that Obi lacks the capacity to do what he claimed during the interview because his posturing was based on unsound arguments and factual inaccuracies.

TDF said: “Obi’s inaccurate narratives at the media interview with Arise TV can best be described as deliberate mischief aimed at misleading the Nigerian public.

“His postulations on boosting national productivity have embarrassingly revealed the paucity of knowledge and shallow understanding with which he was struggling to create relevance for himself. He did nothing but end up boxing the air.

“We believe that even an armchair economist will not assess a country’s productivity without recourse to its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as Obi did in that interview with Arise TV.

“It was therefore shocking to see the former Anambra state governor who inordinately covets the presidency insisting on the TV that there is no productivity in the economy under Tinubu, despite the tremendous contributions of critical sectors like Services, Agriculture and Mining to the nation’s GDP which impressively rose by 3.84% in Q4 of 2024.”

Giving insight into what the Tinubu administration is doing in both the education and health sectors, TDF dismissed Obi’s false assertions that he could transform Nigeria’s education and health sectors if had been President in the last two years.

The TDF had said that Obi should be nudged into reality from his world of fantasy to see the exploits that Tinubu has achieved in the education and health sectors. “The education sector has never seen a policy or programme as effective, and pragmatic as the National Educational Loan Fund (NELFUND), the group said.

“The student loan scheme has brought great relief and hope to indigent students of Nigerian universities. The ever-increasing list of beneficiaries of the student loan stands at over 500,000 undergraduates as of March 2025.

“In our view, the NELFUND policy is not only novel but has also been impactful.

“Furthermore, we are taken aback by the appalling ignorance which Obi displayed about the operations of the Primary Healthcare Centres (PHC) in Nigeria.

“In case the Labour Party chieftain does not know, the need to enable local governments to deliver on basic responsibilities like primary healthcare was the prime motive behind Tinubu’s efforts to ensure that they get direct allocation from FAAC.

“This is because the provision of
primary healthcare services are a major responsibility of the local governments, without prejudice to the interventionist efforts of the Federal Government.

“In addition to empowering the local governments through direct access to allocations from the federation account, President Tinubu has also initiated measures to provide free Caesarian Sections to pregnant mothers across the country, reduced the cost of dialysis by 70% for kidney patients, and granted a duty free waiver for the importation of pharmaceutical products to make drugs cheaper for Nigerians.

“Obi’s flip-flop and penchant for double-speak was obvious during the Arise TV interview when he said political alliances brought Nigeria to its present State. Yet, he confirmed that he was going into an alliance with other political figures ahead of 2027.

Also, in one breath, Obi criticized the nation’s external borrowings, but in another, he promised “to channel borrowed funds into critical sectors” if elected President.

“What is clear to many Nigerians is that the critical sectors of the Nigerian economy have been through positive transformation in the last twenty-two months of the Tinubu administration,” it said.

TDF urged Nigerians to remain resolute in their support of the President so that the ongoing efforts by the administration to make the nation better will not be in vain.

End

By Majeed Ishola

The Tinubu Media Support Group (TMSG) has said that there is nothing in the recent interview of the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, that showed he could have done better than President Bola Tinubu in handling the economy as he claimed.

In a statement signed by its Chairman Emeka Nwankpa and Secretary Dapo Okubanjo, TMSG described Obi’s position in the interview on Arise TV as sheer bluster full of hot air.

TMSG said: “We watched Mr Peter Obi’s recent interview on Arise TV’s Prime Time and also read the transcripts of his assessment of President Bola Tinubu’s handling of the national economy and other sundry political issues, and what came across was nothing but sheer bluster filled with hot air.

“As usual, he threw around ‘productivity’, the same buzzword he used during his ill-fated political campaign when he argued that he could have made the country more productive in two years.

“He spoke as if productivity was a button on a switchboard he could punch to drive change automatically and deliberately ignored the fact of what the Tinubu administration has been doing to drive positive political and economic changes.

“We wonder what Obi could have done differently, for instance, with the National Tax reform bills which have been at the National Assembly since October 2024 and which took more than a year of consultation and brainstorming by a Presidential Committee set up in August 2023 to shape.

“If Nigeria were not a democracy like Obi now says as part of his new communication strategy, we dare say that President Tinubu would have started implementing the tax reforms, which were designed to boost productivity, within a few months of assuming office.

“But only people who understand the fundamentals of democracy will appreciate the process the Tinubu tax reforms have been going through since at least August 2023.

“And talking about productivity, it is a statement of fact that Nigeria has in the last 22 months witnessed a major boost in daily crude production and also recorded N17bn of investments in the oil sector as a result of reforms instituted by new policy directives of the Tinubu administration.”

TMSG also spoke on Peter Obi’s other claims, including his assertion that he would have fixed Primary Healthcare Centers nationwide in two years.

“In addition, we were taken aback by Obi’s brag that he would have fixed Primary Healthcare Centers (PHCs) and primary schools in two years if he were president.

“This is laughable, especially coming from a man who was Anambra governor for 8 years, yet it just emerged that a local government as prominent as Onitsha South only had a public hospital in 2025, courtesy of Governor Charles Soludo.

“Besides, it is surprising that a former governor does not know that PHCs and primary schools are largely the responsibilities of state and local governments, with the federal government only saddled with playing a secondary or supportive role and indeed, the Tinubu administration has been living up to its responsibilities to PHCs.

“And as usual, there was no way a Peter Obi interview would have ended without exaggeration and outright lie as he falsely claimed that Tinubu met a debt of N17 trillion but took it to N170 trillion.

“Only a barefaced, fake news merchant seeking political validation would make such a wild claim, especially as the Debt Management Office (DMO) recently put the entire public debt as of May 2023 at N87 trillion, so we wonder where Obi got his own figures from. Also, the current public debt profile is nowhere near his claim of N170 trillion.

“How could he also have suggested that the cost of debt servicing was increasing without him immediately being fact-checked by his interviewers?

“All Nigerians, aside from those bent on playing politics, should know, by now, that the debt service ratio has been reduced from 96% in 2023 to about 68%.

“So we were not under any illusion that the former Anambra state governor would never see any good in what the Tinubu administration is doing but what he said in that TV interview did not show he could have done better than the incumbent President in two years,” the group added.

By Majeed Ishola

The Independent Media and Policy Initiative (IMPI) has described recent comments by the Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, on using money to drive economic productivity as not only simplistic but also hollow.

The policy group noted that Mr Obi’s position which he canvassed in a recent TV interview shows a pedestrian understanding of the national economy.

In a policy statement signed by its Chairman Dr Niyi Akinsiju, IMPI argued that economic productivity is not a stand-alone item that could be automatically fixed with a single-dose action.

It said: “We do not begrudge Mr Obi accusing the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of being ineffective in implementing economic policies but
we consider his proposition of injecting money into productivity as the singular solution to Nigeria’s economic malaise in the first two years of this administration, if he were to be the President, as manipulative and borne of a deficient understanding of historical issues that underline Nigeria’s economic trajectory.

“He claims his silver bullet proposition would lead to a more productive and sustainable economy. Coming from a former governor and one who had chaired the board of a commercial bank, we found this submission puzzling and, at the same time, vexatiously narrow.

“The fact is that productivity is not a stand-alone item in the universe of economic productivity. It is, by fact and praxis, made up of different components and values aggregation.

“Economic productivity, which implies the efficiency of an economy in producing goods and services, is influenced by human capital (education, skills), technology, physical capital (equipment), natural resources, and entrepreneurship.

“Driving economic productivity supposes an overall strategy to streamline these factors and generate the appropriate quantum of revenue to invest in them while considering the period it would take to gestate and impact the economic space.”

The policy group pointed at Nigeria’s economic challenges and wondered what the former Anambra state governor would have done differently from steps taken by the Tinubu administration.

“Since 2014, Nigeria has had to contend with challenges of low revenue exacerbated by policies that continuously erode productivity, such as fuel subsidies and multiple exchange rates.

“Despite the storm associated with the removal of fuel subsidies and the harmonization of multiple foreign exchange windows, the Tinubu administration expressed a profound understanding of the national economy by conducting the equivalence of a surgical incision on the economy.
Tangential to this is the “injection of money into productivity” single-dose treatment of the nation’s economic malaise advocacy by Mr Obi.

“In an economy characterised by low revenue and huge accumulated debt as of the May 29, 2023 handover date, Mr Obi has left us wondering what exact policy options he would have deployed to achieve his “monetary injection into productivity” policy if he were President.

“To put it in context, we wonder how and what routes Mr Obi would wish to adopt in the first two years of his Presidency to accomplish his vaunted policy if he were in President Tinubu’s shoes.

“This is, more, in the face of a legacy of a fiscally constrained economy that manifests in a trifecta of headwinds witnessed from the second half of 2014 through to the disruptions occasioned by the 2020 Covid pandemic and the gross economic erosion recorded in the Covid era through to the post-Covid years to 2023 when the Tinubu administration, determinedly commenced the engineering of a paradigm change of the nation’s economic template.

“Against this background, we consider it somewhat perplexing that Mr Obi would criticise the Tinubu administration for ‘floating the naira in the absence of productivity while also increasing the country’s debt profile and the cost of debt servicing’ which, according to him, was above the budgetary allocation for critical sectors like health and education.

“We consider this sweeping averment on the character of Nigeria’s emerging economy under the Tinubu administration to be either the outcome of unbridled ignorance about the workings of an economy or a deliberate manipulation of facts and reality to exploit Nigerians’ base political sentiments,” the policy group said.

IMPI added that contrary to Obi’s claims, its analysis which aligns with that of the World Bank shows that there are enough pointers to the success of the ongoing economic reforms.

“Against Mr Obi’s merchant-minded, import-focused understanding of the depreciation of the naira as a consequence of floating the local currency and the diminished value of the naira relative to other currencies, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that Nigeria recorded in 2024 a total trade volume of N138 trillion or $89.9 billion, the highest in the country’s history, representing a 106% increase compared to the previous year.

“We also observe how the national economy is shifting from a low revenue-earning to an increasing capacity for high revenue generation, as shown in the quantum of revenue available to be shared among the three tiers of government by the Federation Accounts and Allocation Committee (FAAC).

“In 2024, Nigeria’s Federation Account received ₦15 trillion in revenue, with a 43% jump in disbursements to the Federal Government, States, and Local Government Councils. In contrast, N10.143 trillion was received and shared among the tiers of government as statutory revenue allocations in 2023.
In this light, Mr Obi’s conjecture on economic issues shows a truly deficient comprehension of the dynamics of economics and their real-life application,”it noted.

The policy group also questioned Obi’s understanding of the constitutional mandates of the tiers of government on the basis of his position on the President taking responsibility for primary healthcare and basic education in Nigeria

End

POLICY STATEMENT 023 BY
THE INDEPENDENT MEDIA AND POLICY INITIATIVE (IMPI)

*Dissecting Obi’s Economic Sophistry*

We have reviewed the submissions and responses made by the Labour Party candidate in the 2023 presidential election, Mr Peter Obi, on a television station’s news interview programme. Considering his public standing and antecedents, we found his specious generalisation of the nation’s economic environment and his proffered solutions utterly simplistic, commonplace, and confounding.

We do not begrudge Mr Obi accusing the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of being ineffective in implementing economic policies. However, we consider his proposition of injecting money into productivity as the singular solution to Nigeria’s economic malaise in the first two years of this administration if he were to be the President as manipulative and borne of a deficient understanding of historical issues that underline Nigeria’s economic trajectory.

He claims his silver bullet proposition would lead to a more productive and sustainable economy.

Coming from a former governor and one who had chaired the board of a commercial bank, we found this submission puzzling and, at the same time, vexatiously narrow. The fact is that productivity is not a stand-alone item in the universe of economic productivity. It is, by fact and praxis, made up of different components and values aggregation.

Economic productivity, which implies the efficiency of an economy in producing goods and services, is influenced by human capital (education, skills), technology, physical capital (equipment), natural resources, and entrepreneurship. Driving economic productivity supposes an overall strategy to streamline these factors and generate the appropriate quantum of revenue to invest in them while considering the period it would take to gestate and impact the economic space.

Since 2014, Nigeria has had to contend with challenges of low revenue exacerbated by policies that continuously erode productivity, such as fuel subsidies and multiple exchange rates. Despite the storm associated with the removal of fuel subsidies and the harmonisation of multiple foreign exchange windows, the Tinubu administration expressed a profound understanding of the national economy by conducting the equivalence of a surgical incision on the economy.

Tangential to this is the “injection of money into productivity” single-dose treatment of the nation’s economic malaise advocacy by Mr Obi. In an economy characterised by low revenue and huge accumulated debt as of the May 29, 2023 handover date, Mr Obi has left us wondering what exact policy options he would have deployed to achieve his “monetary injection into productivity” policy if he were President.

To put it in context, we wonder how and what routes Mr Obi would wish to adopt in the first two years of his Presidency to accomplish his vaunted policy if he were in President Tinubu’s shoes. This is, more, in the face of a legacy of a fiscally constrained economy that manifests in a trifecta of headwinds witnessed from the second half of 2014 through to the disruptions occasioned by the 2020 Covid pandemic and the gross economic erosion recorded in the Covid era through to the post-Covid years to 2023 when the Tinubu administration, determinedly commenced the engineering of a paradigm change of the nation’s economic template.

Against this background, we consider it somewhat perplexing that Mr Obi would criticise the Tinubu administration for floating the naira in the absence of productivity while also increasing the country’s debt profile and the cost of debt servicing, which, he said, was above the budgetary allocation for critical sectors like health and education.

We consider this sweeping averment of the character of Nigeria’s emerging economy under the Tinubu administration to be either the outcome of unbridled ignorance about the workings of an economy or a deliberate manipulation of facts and reality to exploit Nigerians’ base political sentiments. Indeed, nothing reeks of sophistry more than this ill-anchored generalisation of the state of the Nigerian economy.

Contrary to Mr Obi’s doomsday characterisation of the Nigerian economy, our reading of the national economy indicates an emerging economy forged in the best tradition of inclusive growth, market-determined conditions, and the facilitation of participatory international trade.

Against Mr Obi’s merchant-minded, import-focused understanding of the depreciation of the naira as a consequence of floating the local currency and the diminished value of the naira relative to other currencies, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that Nigeria recorded in 2024 a total trade volume of N138 trillion or $89.9 billion, the highest in the country’s history, representing a 106% increase compared to the previous year.

We also observe how the national economy is shifting from a low revenue-earning to an increasing capacity for high revenue generation, as shown in the quantum of revenue available to be shared among the three tiers of government by the Federation Accounts and Allocation Committee (FAAC).

In 2024, Nigeria’s Federation Account received ₦15 trillion in revenue, with a 43% jump in disbursements to the Federal Government, States, and Local Government Councils. In contrast, N10.143 trillion was received and shared among the tiers of government as statutory revenue allocations in 2023.

In this light, Mr Obi’s conjecture on economic issues shows a truly deficient comprehension of the dynamics of economics and their real-life application.

This is even more grievous in the context of Mr Obi criticising the high interest rate under Tinubu when anybody with a basic understanding of economics knows that interest rate, per term, is determined by Central Banks, in the case of Nigeria, the Central Bank of Nigeria, with the executive arm of the federal government, by law, restricted from any form of intervention in the monetary policy affair of the CBN.

An adjunct to this is Mr Obi’s claim that he would fix primary healthcare centres and schools if he were President. Again, within what context does he plan to do this? By constitutional mandates, primary health care centres and primary schools are strictly within the purview of the Local Government Area Council tier of government. Thus, the best a federal administration can do is through interventions like the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) or the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA).

Our prognosis of the Tinubu administration’s management of the Nigerian economy agrees with the World Bank overview of Tinubu’s economic template, which reads thus:

“Since May 2023, Nigeria has implemented significant reforms to stabilise its economy, resulting in modest growth, improved fiscal health, and rising foreign exchange reserves. While these measures were necessary to urgently avert a budgetary crisis and place Nigeria on a stronger development path, they have imposed short-term pressures on households and businesses.

“Positive results from these reforms are starting to show at the macroeconomic level. For example, output growth has remained modest overall, but inched higher through mid-2024 as oil sector output has stabilised and activity in some services has been robust. The fiscal position is also improving, with the Federal Government’s fiscal deficit narrowing to 4.4% of GDP in the first half of 2024 from 6.2% in the first half of 2023, helping to mitigate debt-related risks. Foreign exchange reserves – a buffer against external shocks – have risen from $32.9 billion at the end of 2023 to more than $38.8 billion by mid-October 2024. However, inflation remains high, and inched up again in September 2024, mainly due to the most recent gasoline price increases and recent floods.

“Given these promising results, the new direction of macroeconomic policies should be sustained, including the Central Bank of Nigeria’s appropriately tight monetary policy stance. Complementing them with measures to address long-standing structural constraints will enable faster progress in the fight against inflation, and spur the investment, growth, and jobs which Nigeria urgently needs.

“The macroeconomic reforms, if sustained and expanded, will create a new platform to ignite growth and poverty reduction, while ongoing reforms will boost international competitiveness, increase the attractiveness of Nigeria for domestic and foreign investments, and have started to reduce debt-related fiscal risks and reopen fiscal space.”

Nothing can be more accurate and reflective of the Nigerian economic situation than this World Bank submission. In stark contrast, Mr Obi’s analysis reflects a pedestrian understanding of the national economy.

In conclusion, we appeal to Mr Obi to be more upfront in his public engagements and always ensure the preeminence of truth and genuineness of facts and figures. Politicians should collaborate to facilitate development and economic growth in a peaceful atmosphere, which Nigerians deserve.

Omoniyi M.Akinsiju, PhD
Chairman,
Independent Media and Policy Initiative (IMPI)
April 2025

By Danladi Ahmed

The Democratic Front (TDF) has joined other patriotic groups and notable Nigerians to defend President Bola Tinubu’s proclamation of a State of Emergency in Rivers State.

In a statement signed by its Chairman, Mallam Danjuma Muhammad and Secretary, Chief Wale Adedayo, TDF described it as a bold move to prevent a total breakdown of law and order following protracted political rancour between the Executive and Legislative arms of government.

It said: “We recall that less than a week before the presidential proclamation, the President hosted the leadership of the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) in Abuja where he advised on quick implementation of the Supreme Court Judgement that recognized the 27 members of the State Assembly.

“Subsequently, The Democratic Front issued a statement after the event on the need to heed President Tinubu’s advice in obeying the Supreme Court Judgement, and also explore the window of reconciliation which was initiated by the President over a year ago.

“Unfortunately, PANDEF was not able to strike any reasonable compromise with the parties in the dispute, which has paralyzed the administration of the state with severe consequences on economic development in nearly two years.

“It was evident that both parties in the political dispute were not prepared to work together in the interest of the state.

“In our view, no responsible President or government will stay passive and watch the rapid degeneration of state affairs from an orderly democratic system anchored on the principle of the Rule of Law to condone lawlessness and look away from the theatre of a contrived balance of terror, as evident in the bombing of pipelines.

“We also welcome the unanimous approval of the State of Emergency by both chambers of the National Assembly, because we believe that President Tinubu acted in the interest of peace and security of residents of the state.”

TDF urge all the parties in the conflict to see the six months of the emergency rule as another opportunity to seek a peaceful end to their differences.

End