“We had expected that a President that has
spent about 6 years in office with the revenues more than what all governments
before him had received will run on a record of performance rather than
peddling lies and hate media campaigns that are accentuating ethnic and
religious tensions in the country,” it said in a press conference in Abuja
addressed by Mallam Garba Shehu, its Director of Media and Publicity.
The APC Campaign observed that a panoramic view
of how much of Nigeria’s resources Jonathan and the PDP have spent on print,
broadcast and social media campaigns just to damage the unassailable credential
of Gen Buhari’s integrity would confound any casual observer of the polity in
recent times.
Among them, it noted: “An average cost of a
wrap around in Tier 1 and Tier 2 newspapers in Nigeria is between N15 million
to N20 million and the Jonathan campaign buys average of 5 wrap around and
front pages in a day in the last 3 months coupled with the hundreds of billions
that have been spent on negative TV exposures on AIT, NTA and other television
and radio stations across the country.”
It further noted that President Jonathan has
been criss-crossing Nigeria, giving an average of N50 million each to
traditional rulers, most especially in the South West and the Northern parts of
Nigeria.
“This week, the President’s campaign money is
being shipped to the North. Letters in English and Hausa backed by millions in
cash are being dispatched to willing rulers in the region. Religious leaders,
trade unions, youths organisations, professional bodies, entertainers are not
ruled out of the money sharing jamboree of President Jonathan.”
It recalled in that regard that one pastor
recently confirmed that N7 billion was given to Pastors to spread unfounded
allegations of Islamaphobia and scare mongering against Gen Buhari and other
APC leaders.
“A president and his depraved political party
that finds it convenient to lavish billions of Naira on political propaganda
spins, but finds it difficult to remove the corruption surrounding the access
to kerosene for millions of families in this country should not deserve the
votes of Nigerians,” the Campaign said.
It noted that the entire oil industry in
Nigeria stinks of corruption, and rather than investing its energies into how
petroleum products will be accessible to Nigerians, the Jonathan government
busies itself blindly spending money to confuse Nigerians about the electoral
choices they make.
It recalled that in various Nigerian states
over the past year, in all the geopolitical zones, teachers have gone on strike
on account of unpaid salaries, leaving millions of children idle and without
access to formal education for months at a stretch. Similarly, many
Nigerian teachers went for the Christmas holidays without having received their
November and December salaries, it said, and many earn less than the agreed
minimum wage.
“Mindless looting of our national treasury to
fund hate campaign and rent crowd at home and abroad like the case of
rudderless Nigerians at Chatham House in London, arming ethnic militias for
election purposes will not save this incompetent and clueless government being
presided over by President Jonathan and his party from defeat on Saturday at
the polls,” the APC Campaign Organization promised.
It reiterated that the issues in Saturday’s
election are massive corruption in the conduct of government business,
insecurity, unemployment and systemic decay in all sectors of our
economy.
“They are the issues this government has been
found wanting by Nigerians and for which they are ready to cast their votes for
APC and our Presidential Candidate, Gen Buhari.”
Text of the press statement:
Gentlemen of the Press you are welcome to this
very important press conference.
We will like to bring to your attention and
that of Nigerians how the President Goodluck Jonathan led Peoples Democratic
Party government is wasting one trillion Naira that belong to Nigerian people
in his self-serving and desperate bid for a re-election at all cost in the
midst of grinding poverty his party and government has subjected Nigerians to
in the last 16 years.
It is unconscionable and height of betrayal of
public trust that a government and a President who should preside over the
husbandry and judicious use of our national patrimony is superintending over
its massive squander in a futile attempt to stop the idea of change. Let us
sound a note of warning at this point that no amount of sponsored negative
media propaganda can stop this idea whose time has come.
The APC Presidential Campaign and the
acceptability of our candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari and his Vice
Presidential Candidate, Professor Yemi Osinbajo has become a peoples’ movement
and Nigerian masses who are the drivers of change are the major stakeholders.
A panoramic view of how much Nigeria’s
resources Jonathan and PDP have laboriously and wantonly spent on print,
broadcast and social media campaigns just to damage the unassailable credential
of Gen Buhari’s integrity will confound any casual observer of the polity in
recent times.
An average cost of a wrap around in Tier 1 and
Tier 2 newspapers in Nigeria is between N15 million to N20 million and the
Jonathan campaign buys average of 5 wrap around and front pages in a day in the
last 3 months coupled with the hundreds of billions that have been spent on negative
TV exposures on AIT, NTA and other television and radio stations across the
country.
We had expected that a President that has spent
about 6 years in office with the revenues more than what all governments before
him had received will run on a record of performance rather than peddling lies
and hate media campaigns that are accentuating ethnic and religious tensions in
the country.
President Jonathan has been criss-crossing
Nigeria giving an average of N50 million each to traditional rulers, most especially
in the South West and the Northern parts of Nigeria. This week, the President’s
campaign money is being shipped to the North. Letters in English and Hausa
backed by millions in cash are being dispatched to willing rulers in the
region. Religious leaders, trade unions, youths organisations, professional
bodies, entertainers are not ruled out of the money sharing jamboree of
President Jonathan.
Gentlemen of the Press you will recall that a
Pastor recently confirmed that N7 billion was given to Pastors to spread
unfounded allegations of Islamaphobia and scare mongering against Gen Buhari
and other APC leaders.
We are very much concerned as a campaign
organisation that this hundreds of billions that have been sunk into bottomless
pit of illogical and unreasonable negative campaign of calumny can conveniently
provide basic amenities and social services that will improve the standard of
living of our people through improvement in our healthcare delivery system,
education, road, access to credit by rural women, improve our national
electricity grid to save businesses from collapsing under high cost of
generating their own power.
A fraction of the trillion naira hate campaign
expenditure will fund the APC programme of feeding primary school pupils in
Nigeria on one nutritional meal a day, comfortably pay N5000 monthly to 25
million very poor Nigerians for a year and pay unemployment benefit for one
year for graduates who can't find gainful employment one year after NYSC which
are core to the social welfare programmes of the APC Federal government Gen
Buhari will lead.
Today, we are all witnesses to the excruciating
pains our people go through to purchase kerosene - a daily household need of
millions of families in Nigeria.
The government officially puts the price of
kerosene at N50 per litre, but every household that purchases the product daily
knows that they spend more than N150 for a litre of kerosene. Any businessman
allocated kerosene by the NNPC returns a handsome margin that goes into the
Jonathan campaign.
A president and his depraved political party
that finds it convenient to lavish billions of Naira on political propaganda
spins, but finds it difficult to remove the corruption surrounding the access
to kerosene for millions of families in this country should not deserve the
votes of Nigerians.
The entire oil industry in Nigeria stinks of
corruption, and rather than government investing its energies into how
petroleum products will be accessible to Nigerians, the Jonathan government
busies itself blindly spending money to confuse Nigerians about the electoral
choices they make.
In various states around the country over the
past year, in all the geopolitical zones, teachers have gone on strike, leaving
millions of children idle and without access to formal education for months at
a stretch, owing to unpaid salaries. Many Nigerian teachers went for the
Christmas holidays without having received their November and December
salaries. Many earn less than the agreed minimum wage.
Mindless looting of our national treasury to
fund hate campaign and rent crowd at home and abroad like the case of
rudderless Nigerians at Chatham House in London, arming ethnic militias for
election purposes will not save this incompetent and clueless government being
presided over by President Jonathan and his party from defeat on Saturday at
the polls.
The frustrations of Nigerians on the Jonathan
government are very manifest – you can almost touch it on the back of your
wrist. Therefore, this election is not about how much the incumbent president
and the ruling party can spend to dubiously keep itself in power. And let the
PDP make no mistakes about it: this election is clearly a referendum on the
performance of the Goodluck Jonathan administration and millions of Nigerians
going to cast their ballot in this Saturday’s election will be going there to
write an epitaph of the PDP and Jonathan government.
We want to reiterate that the issues in this
election are massive corruption in the conduct of government business,
insecurity, unemployment and systemic decay in all sectors of our economy. They
are the issues this government has been found wanting by Nigerians and for
which they are ready to cast their votes for APC and our Presidential
Candidate, Gen Buhari.
Thank you for your kind attention and for
attending this press conference at a very short notice.
Mallam Garba Shehu
Directorate of Media and Publicity
APC Presidential Campaign Organisation
Source:Sahara Reporters
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