Spokesperson of the Tinubu-Shettima presidential campaign, Festus Keyamo, on Friday said the student loans Bola Tinubu promised when the All Progressives Congress (APC) was campaigning in 2015 did not materialize because of recessions, IgbereTV reports
Keyamo was speaking on the contents of the recently released manifesto of the APC presidential candidate as a guest.
Asked about the student loan promise in the manifesto when the one Tinubu promised in 2015 wasn’t fulfilled, Keyamo said that the recessions which the country entered into after the APC took over government contributed to the inability of the government to fulfil the student loan promise.
“I think the roadmap and foundation is being laid, let me tell you why, you see because you also need to ramp up revenue first and make them available for students to tap into that revenue base and that is why we are talking about revenue now, how to ramp up those revenues,” he said.
“In 2014, no less a person that 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.
“Now what happened therefore was that we came in and met that recession and then the country slid into recession but because of the deftness of the handling of the economy we came out of that recession faster than even the IMF predicted and also the second recession, we came out faster than they predicted.”
Keyamo also added low oil production to the factors that ensured that his party didn’t deliver on its promise, but maintained that the dream to fulfil them remains alive
