The All Progressives Congress (APC) has transferred the blame over the new record of over 133 million poor Nigerians in the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari of the APC to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The APC Director of Information at the national secretariat, Bala Ibrahim, speaking on Channels Television on Monday, said that the 16 years of PDP government was responsible for the high figure of 130 million Nigerians living under poverty in the Buhari administration. The director was of the view that the Buhari administration rather produced many millionaire rice farmers since May 2015.
Ibrahim, responding to the report of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in November that, using multidimensional approach, 133 million people are poor, that is 63% of the Nigerian population, said: “I am happy the NBS did not say it is the APC that impoverished Nigerians.”
According him, “This poverty that has taken control of Nigeria is as a result of the misrule of the PDP for 16 years. The APC since it came into power has been doing everything to uplift the standard of living, to take people to the place of their ambitions and it promised to provide succour and it is doing so.
“It is not something that can happen overnight, but if you take the statistics of the number of people that have been taken to the next level, the number of people that have been pulled out of poverty, the number of people that are happy, particular the number of people that have been turned into millionaires through rice farmers, you will see that no government in the history of Nigeria has done so well in fighting poverty like this administration.”
The APC Director of Information was unable to say the number of the “millionaire rice farmers” the Buhari administration has produced in the over seven and half years since it took over from the PDP, which he said ruled Nigeria, in May 2015.
At the previous report, the poverty figure was about 93 million, but the current figure rose to 130 million in the APC government.