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The federal
government yesterday took on former vice president and presidential
aspirant of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, over a letter he allegedly wrote
to President Goodluck Jonathan over the country’s economy, stating that
the letter was a desperate attempt to mislead the electorate.

The minister of
finance, Olusegun Aganga, who spoke on the issue, said Mr Atiku had
chosen to deliberately manipulate and misinterpret the economic growth
figures that are provided by the National Bureau of Statistics.

This, he said,
betrayed either a lack of understanding of the data or ignorance of the
economic context in which these various growth statistics were achieved.

“In any case, the
letter fails to point towards the real messages in the NBS data and
again is riddled with inaccuracies,” Mr Aganga said.

The former vice
president had, on January 2, written to Mr Jonathan warning him that
the proposal in the budget could worsen the state of the nation’s
economy. A statement by his campaign outfit, Atiku Abubakar Campaign
Organisation (ACO) in Abuja, also said the president was too ashamed to
personally defend the budget, insisting that the budget of a nation is
too serious a matter to defend through anonymous persons. But Mr Aganga
said he could not believe that such a letter could come from an
individual with aspirations to govern the country.

“Resorting to
outright lies and misrepresentation to seek cheap political points is
regrettable,” Mr Aganga said, adding that the letter may have been
written without Mr Abubakar’s knowledge.

Contrary to claims
by the former vice president that the economy is underperforming, the
minister said not even the global economic crisis was able to stop the
growth of the local economy, as the country had out-performed many
global economies. He said that the reports of the agencies Mr. Abubakar
quoted actually rated the country high, adding that he doubted if Mr
Abubakar actually read the report of the rating agencies he relied upon
to attack the president and government.

Speaking to
journalists at the State House in Abuja, yesterday, Mr Aganga said such
outbursts by the former vice president did not usually translate into a
credible alternative for the future of the economy.

“Nigerians deserve better and would see through the uninformed attack that is guided as a patriotic statement,” he said.

Vote of confidence

Regarding the planned $500million Eurobond, the minister said it had been expected that the issue would be oversubscribed.

“The advice we
received from international investors is that the debut Nigerian
offering is very eagerly anticipated and demand will be strong,” he
said. “Fits of laughter aside, we would advise the author of the letter
that the transaction will be closed only on the most attractive
commercial terms for Nigeria with investors being encouraged by our
strong external and fiscal balance sheet and not by high returns as
claimed in the letter.”

He said that apart
from published research backing investment in Nigeria by leading
investment banks, a leading financial institution, Goldman Sachs also
warned global economic players of the risk of not investing in Nigeria.

“These statements
directly contradict the ‘vote of no confidence’ that the author of the
letter and his advisers would like Nigerians to falsely believe,” he
said.

Mr Aganga also
debunked the claim that the president accumulated the highest level of
debt increase by any president in any given year, adding that this
depicted the failure of the writer to understand the global economic
and financial dynamics of the period 2008-2010, a period he described
as extraordinary for all economies both developed and developing.

“It is regrettable that a letter purported to have been written by a
former vice president should contain such misrepresentations and we can
only assume that he was ill-advised or it was sent without his
knowledge,” Mr Aganga said. “If this is indeed the case, it is clear
that this letter is a desperate attempt by the author to mislead the
electorate and the Nigerian public through the misrepresentation of the
facts and inclusion of inaccuracies with a view to making political
gain ahead of the elections.”