Last week Friday, the vice presidential debate organised by the Nigerian Election Debate Group (NEDG) and the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON), took place. The five candidates that participated in the debate were the current vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, of the All Progressives Congress; Peter Obi of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); Khadijah Abdullahi-Iya of the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN), Umma Getso of the Young Progressive Party, and Ganiyu Galadima of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN).
In saner climes and developed countries, debates are a pivotal part of the campaign process. The debates offer voters the chance to hear directly from the candidates, where they stand on various issues, as well as to see how the candidates conduct themselves. Consequently, the debates have the largest audience of any of the televised campaign events.
So, on Friday, we had the chance to hear from our vice presidential candidates. The first takeaway from the debate was that we still have only two parties -The All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The much-touted Third force or red card movement is a charade and dead on arrival. It could have been Peter Obi and Osinbajo on the stage as the other candidates proved to us once again that we don’t need 100 mushroom political parties with no structure or office in any part of the country parading themselves as the best thing since sliced bread. The presidency of a country is serious business and clowns don’t need to apply.
I believe the ACPN candidate, Ganiyu, thought he was going to a circus show and not something as important as a vice presidential debate, The two other women in my rating, performed better than him. Although Umma Getso’s performance was bromidic, I still love her attempts to answer some of the questions unlike her other two colleagues who had no grasp of the facts and issues.
We were treated to some sound bites in the debate but the best clap back for me was when Peter Obi said, ‘‘you cannot lock your shop and chase after thieves’’ and Yemi Osinbajo responded that ‘’if you leave thieves to steal the inventory, there will be no shop’’.
Also, if not for his penchant for reeling out false statistics, Obi performed well. Politicians should know that in this era of social media, it is very easy to fact check claims and statistics. He later deleted those tweets where he dished out false and outlandish claims. On Tuesday, he issued a statement claiming that contrary to reports most of his statistics were not fictitious.
An online medium, Cable. ng, did a fact check on most of Obi and Osinbajo’s claims.
Obi said: There are about two million vehicles in Nigeria.
Checked: False. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria has a total vehicle population of about 11,547,236 as at the third quarter of 2017.
Osinbajo: Lagos-Ibadan expressway was “practically” abandoned for 16 years under PDP.
Checked: False. The Goodluck Jonathan administration made many interventions on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, awarding a multi-billion naira contract to Julius Berger and RCC. The administration fixed the Ibadan to Ogere section of the road.
Osinbajo: A bag of fertiliser now sells for N6, 000 to N7, 000.
Checked: Largely correct. Price of fertiliser has experienced a drastic drop following the Nigeria-Morocco fertiliser deal. Current prices are between N5, 500 and N6, 500. As at 2016, a bag of fertiliser sold above N10, 000.
Obi: Nigeria has fallen on the global competitive index from 124 to 127.
Checked: False. According to the latest (2018) World Economic Forum report, Nigeria rose on the index by 10 places. Obi’s claim was true in 2016.
Osinbajo: There is a tax threshold for SMEs, SMEs get to a level before they pay taxes.
Checked: True. There is a lower tax rate of 20 per cent applicable to small companies in manufacturing, agriculture and mining within their first five years of business. The problem with the law is that the turnover threshold to qualify is only N1 million which is not in tune with current realities.
Obi: Nigeria’s foreign direct investment for 2015 was $21bn, while it fell to $12bn in 2017…
Checked: False. According to NBS capital importation reports, Nigeria’s total imported capital stood at $9.6 billion in 2015, and $12.3 billion in 2017. Perhaps Obi meant 2014, when Nigeria’s total capital imported stood at $20.7 billion.
OBI: African trade today is less than 9 percent.
Checked: False. According to Afriexim Bank, Intra-Africa trade is around 15 per cent. In 2016, intra-African exports made up 18 per cent of total exports according to Brookings Institution. According to UNDP, Africa’s share of global trade is currently two per cent.
Osinbajo: Nigeria went down by 64 places under PDP, but has risen by 24 places under APC.
Checked: Partly false. Nigeria went down from 120 to 170 between 2008 and 2015, under PDP rule. Under the APC, ease of doing business has risen from 170 in 2015 to 146 in 2018, according to the World Bank Ease of Doing Business report.
Obi: Oil gives you 80 per cent of foreign exchange earnings.
Checked: Point valid, figures near accurate. As at 2017 NBS figures showed that Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings from oil the oil sector stood above 90 per cent.
If it was in developed climes, the PDP would have lost a chunk of voters due to Obi’s unfounded claims but this is Nigeria where we say in local parlance “ who debate epp”.
Like I have always said, 95 per cent of Nigerian voters are already decided between President Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar. Debates and campaigns are for the five per cent who are not yet decided. Many people have already made up their mind along ethnic and regional bias. Before the debate, I was telling someone just go to the social media after the debates, APC apologist will be telling you Osinbajo won the debate and PDP apologist will also tell you Obi dominated.
Just like I predicted, after the debate I went on Facebook and Twitter to sample people’s opinions on the debate and everyone was giving his rating based on his or her bias.
After all is said, we are back to where we started, for now and foreseeable future we are stuck with the APC and PDP, the other political parties are time wasters and should just concentrate on the lesser elections.
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