The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has dismissed critics of Governor Charles Soludo’s recent lecture at The Platform on Nigeria’s economy, describing them as political jobbers seeking attention.
The party also rejected reports suggesting that Governor Soludo disagreed with the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, on economic matters, describing such claims as “pedestrian” and aimed at overheating the polity.
During his lecture, Governor Soludo asserted that critics of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration often rely on reports from international institutions to attack the government, yet ignore commendations from the same bodies when they are in favour of the administration.
According to Soludo:
“But let’s be clear: the audacious structural reforms embarked upon by the current administration of HE Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, have rescued the economy from the tipping point.
On the matter of the trajectory of the current economic reforms, the World Bank and others are largely right. (Funny enough, when these institutions criticise the government, some people use them as validation of their own criticisms, but when the same institutions give a positive report, they are derided as ‘neoliberal, out-of-touch institutions’).
In 2023, I had described the state of the economy when this government assumed office as akin to a standing dead horse, and public finance was about to tip from insolvency, with potential catastrophic consequences, including possible mass retrenchment of workers and/or arrears of salaries and pensions. Public finance is back on a solvency path and macro fundamentals are recovering positively.”
Reacting to the backlash, APGA’s National Publicity Secretary, Mazi Ejimofor Opara, said some “political jobbers” were simply trying to stoke controversy to regain relevance.
“True to the nature of these political jobbers, they are at it again—simply because they are out of work and their benefactors appear not to be looking their way. Hence, this recent hogwash,” he said.
Opara noted that copies of Governor Soludo’s lecture are publicly available, and at no point did he mention Peter Obi or any other prominent politician.
“In their hunger-propelled antics, they found the act of name-dropping as yet another opportunity to relaunch themselves into relevance before their benefactors,” he added.
He emphasized that Governor Soludo remains undistracted by what he called “spurious allegations” and is fully focused on the socioeconomic development of Anambra State.
“The governor is too preoccupied with sustaining the gargantuan socioeconomic development of Anambra State to condescend to the rantings of political pedestrians,” Opara concluded.
