Presidential spokesperson, Mr Garba Shehu has suffered serious backlash over a statement he made on Channels TV, while appearing as guest on Sunrise Daily.
While reacting to a question by his host, on the amount of job loss in the country, Mr Shehu said the Buhari led government has create over 12 millions jobs, which were undocumented by the National Bureau of Statistics.
He further quoted Yemi Kale, the Statistician of the Federation, as saying that the National Bureau of Statistics, doesn’t document data for jobs in the informal sector – A claim that was quickly disowned by Mr Kale.
However, rising to his own defense, Mr Shehu, therefore took to Twitter to try to set the record straight. According to him, there’s nothing wrong with what he said, as he only magnified “impressive report on jobs created in agriculture,” being accomplished by the present government.
There is nothing wrong with what I said on @sunrisedailynow, this morning. I spoke about the very bright picture of jobs creation by the Buhari administration Mr Yemi Kale @sgyemikale gave last week.
— Garba Shehu (@GarShehu) December 17, 2018
Speaking via his Twitter handle on Monday, the presidential spokesman, wrote:
There is nothing wrong with impressive report on jobs created in agriculture I said on Sunrisedailynow, this morning. I spoke about the very bright picture of jobs creation by the Buhari administration, Mr Yemi Kale gave last week.
That impressive report on jobs created in agriculture showed that rice growing states like Jigawa, Ebonyi and Kebbi had the lowest unemployment.
Mr. President, who had complained many times about employment figures reflecting mostly white collar jobs and therefore unfairly underplaying the millions of jobs his administration has created in the farms must have felt a sense of vindication.
The response by the government was, go and put this out, address a world press conference to correct the wrong impression for all to know how well, we are doing in creating jobs. We hope there will soon be a date for that press conference.
