Festus Keyamo, spokesperson for the All Progressives Congress presidential campaign, says the APC-led regime of President Muhammadu Buhari failed to deliver on its campaign promise to provide “students loan” because the PDP plunged Nigeria into recession. 

Bola Tinubu, who is now the party’s presidential candidate for 2023, had in a 2014 Lagos rally promised that the APC government would offer “student loan” if elected.

Asked in an interview with Channels TV on Friday why the party failed to deliver on the promise seven years down the line, Mr Keyamo blamed the Peoples Democratic Party for handing over a bad economy to the APC.

“In 2014, no less a person than Okonjo-Iweala, who was then Minister of Finance, told everyone that we are headed to recession. So we did not give that excuse, it was the PDP government that said at the time they were leaving that the country was on a downward slide towards recession and that was in 2013 and 2014,” Mr Keyamo said.

He went on to state that, “Now what happened, therefore, was that we came in and met that recession and then the country slid into recession.”

“Then we now met low oil production that dropped to 700 barrels per day at times 600 barrels per day when we should have been at 2.3 million barrels per day. We met those problems on ground, so there was a problem of revenue, but the dream remained alive.

“The dream to fulfil these promises are still alive today as we begin to ramp up our revenues and rescue the economy where PDP left the economy and that is where we are now.”

Mr Tinubu unveiled his campaign policy document on Friday, promising to build on Mr Buhari’s legacy, however, the failure of APC to deliver on some of its 2015 campaign promises has raised doubts on whether Mr Tinubu will deliver if elected.