By Reno Omokri
My attention has been drawn to an interview granted by Festus Keyamo to Kayode Okikiolu of Channels Television on Friday, October 22, 2022, wherein he told several lies against the Jonathan government.
It will be remiss of me if I do not set the records straight, being a member of that administration.
The first lie told by Mr. Keyamo is that the Jonathan administration handed over a recessed economy to Buhari.
The truth is that, as at May 29, 2015, Jonathan handed over the third fastest growing economy in the world to General Buhari, according to CNNMoney, (fourth fastest growing in the world according to the World Bank).
Additionally, then President Jonathan left behind $2.07 billion in the Excess Crude Account, plus $3 billion in the Sovereign Wealth Fund as of May 29, 2015. He also bequeathed to the incoming regime $5.6 billion in Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas Limited dividends. Additionally, the Jonathan government left behind a foreign reserve of $28.6 billion.
Mr. Keyamo also averred that the Buhari administration met oil production at 700,000 or 600,000 barrels per day. In making that allegation, he was repeating the false claim made by the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress on October 10, 2022. Both claims are inaccurate. As at May 29, 2015, the Jonathan government handed over oil production of 1.9 million barrels per day to the Buhari government.
And According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, the average daily oil production in the first quarter of 2015 was 2.18 million barrels per day. Ironically, it was our administration that met oil production at 700,000, and raised it to almost 2 million barrels per day.
Finally, we left the Naira at 199 to $1. Today it is 750 naira to $1. We left foreign debt at $10.7 billion. Today it is almost $40 billion. We left the inflation rate at 9.6%. It is now 20.52%.
This clarification is not meant as an attack on the Buhari government. It is just an objective attempt at righting the records.
I would kindly like to appeal to Festus Keyamo to respect the Senior Advocate of Nigeria title that he has and stop demeaning it by telling obvious lies. He can campaign for Bola Tinubu without making false statements about the Jonathan administration.
@views exclusive rights: Reno Omokri, Spokesperson to Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan On New Media, October 22, 2022.
