The Peoples Democratic Party has mocked the All Progressives Congress and its government for staging another shameless media stunt to again beguile Nigerians ahead of the 2023 elections with the unveiling of rice pyramids in Abuja, which it called “pyramids of lies”.
This is coming hours after the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), commissioned the Nigeria Rice Paddy Pyramids at the Abuja International Trade Fair Complex; an initiative of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Rice Farmers Association.
National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Debo Ologunagba, disclosed this in a statement he signed late on Tuesday titled, ‘PDP Mocks Buhari, APC Over Unveiling of Bogus Rice Pyramids.’
According to Ologunagba, Nigerians are aware of how the APC and its government “create” fake pyramids of rice with sandbags and re-bagged rice stacked on pyramid shaped wooden structures as busted in an APC-controlled state in the Southwest in 2018.
“There is nothing to celebrate in the APC pyramid of lies in Abuja. It is rather shameful that APC leaders are again ridiculing President Muhammadu Buhari by making him unveil pyramids of allegedly imported foreign rice which are re-bagged as locally produced, just to create an impression of a boost in local production under his watch.
“If indeed, there is a boost in local production of rice as the APC wants Nigerians to believe, how come the price of rice has not come down but continues to soar from about N8,000 per bag which the PDP handed over to the APC in 2015 to about N30,000 per bag today?
“It is on record that the PDP turned the waterland of various states of our nation into huge rice production hubs with farms and mills springing up across the country, leading to a boost in local production, drastic drop in imports and the celebrated affordable prices of food products under the PDP administration,” the spokesman said.
He added that the APC, with its incompetence, counter-productive policies and “incurable corruption” reversed all the gains made by the PDP in the agricultural sector and triggered a decline in production which resulted in the high cost of food in our country today.
He said Nigerians can recall how the APC-led regime failed to protect farmers and particularly how it blamed over 40 rice farmers killed by terrorists in Borno state instead of going after their assailants.
“The APC pyramids of lies are therefore nothing but huge signposts of their failures and irredeemable proclivity for lies, deception, beguilement and fake performance claims even in the face of unbearable high costs of food, 22.95 per cent food inflation rate and our nation’s ranking as 98th out of 107 in Global Hunger Index.
“It is clear that with the 2023 elections in sight, the APC is desperate in pushing its stock-in-trade, pyramid of lies, propaganda, deceit and bogus claims with which they stole power in 2015,” he argued,” he added.
Ologunagba warned that the APC has not realised that 2023 is not 2015 adding that Nigerians have seen through the party’s deceits and not even these ‘pyramids of lies’ can help it in 2023.
Copyright PUNCH.
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