APC, PDP tango over unemployment rate

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have continued to trade words over unemployment rate in the country.

Yesterday, the PDP said the APC had overstretched the limits of Nigerians by allegedly trivializing and politicizing the frightening unemployment level under its watch and should be ready to face the consequences ahead of ‘its fizzling’ before 2023.

The PDP, in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said by attempting to distort and muffle facts on unemployment, which were already in the public domain, the APC had confirmed that it remained an Automated Lying Machine (ALM) which has never been interested in the welfare of Nigerians.

The PDP said it was shameful that in its attempt to deny that the number of unemployed persons and job losses across the formal and informal sectors had surged under its administration, the APC forgot that the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr Chris Ngige, had earlier disclosed that unemployment rate was at a frightening 23.1 percent while raising alarm that the rate would hit a devastating 33.5 percent in the new year, 2020.

“The APC also forgot that the minister, Ngige, while declaring open a two-day workshop on high unemployment rate earlier in the year, reportedly described the situation as scary and further alerted that apart from the swelling unemployment rate, underemployment had also surged to 16.6 percent.

“The APC, also chose not to remember that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in an earlier report, stated that 16 million Nigerians (which has now risen to 18 million) were unemployed, 18 million more were underemployed while another 27.44 million, reportedly refused to work in 2016 for various reasons not unrelated to frustration in the polity under the APC administration.

“It is completely unpardonable that rather than accepting the truth and seeking for solution to the looming unemployment Armageddon, the APC seeks to trivialize and politicize a serious national problem,” the party said.

However, the APC in a statement earlier issued on Saturday said the President Muhammadu Buhari administration had put a lot of PDP members out of their illegitimate job of looting the country, not the fictitious 40 million Nigerians being bandied by the PDP.

The APC National Publicity Secretary, Malam Lanre Issa-Onilu, said that for 16 years, several leaders of the PDP were having a bazaar over the nation’s commonwealth in their “reckless and senseless race” to produce world’s highest number of billionaires whose only enterprise was stealing from the public purse.

Issa-Onilu said during the period of calamitous heist, thousands of PDP members also held Nigeria by the throat, in an unpatriotic race to help themselves to the country’s collective resources.

He added that the entire public sector in collaboration with willing players from the private sector was neck-deep in fleecing the treasury.

The PDP spokesperson, in an earlier statement on Friday, said the APC under Buhari recorded various failures, including “putting over 40 million Nigerians out of employment.