By Myke Uzendu
The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has mocked President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) over the unveiling of a rice pyramid on Tuesday in Abuja.
The party in a statement by it’s National Publicity Secretary, Hon. Debo Ologunagba, said that the ruling party unveiled a pyramid of lies. It described the event as another shameless media stunt to again beguile Nigerians ahead of 2023 elections with the unveiling of bogus rice pyramids.
“Nigerians are already aware and the pictures abound of how the APC and its government “created” 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.
“Of course, 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”.
The party insisted that all the noise about self suffucency in rice production as well as the much talked about anchor borrower program is a hoax. The party wondered why the price of rice has continued to soar despite all the interventions.
“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.
“Painfully, 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”.
The party recalled that several rice farmers in Borno State, lost their live during the present administration, insisting thay farmers can no longer go to their farms for security reasons.
“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 percent food inflation rate and our nation’s ranking as 98th out of 107 in Global Hunger Index”.
PDP stressed that “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” to the public space
The party maintained that Nigerians have seen through APC deceits adding that not even the “pyramids of lies” can help the APC in 2023.
