If President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party had won the 2015 presidential election, the economy of Nigeria would have collapsed in one month, the Federal Government has said.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said this in a statement in Abuja on Sunday.
Mohammed said this in his reaction to a statement credited to the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, that businesses might collapse in the next six months owing to the fact that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration had allegedly mismanaged the economy.
The minister said the poor state of the country’s economy, especially the depreciation in the naira exchange rate, was the direct consequence of the “incomprehensible mismanagement” of the economy and the mindless looting of the national treasury under the immediate past administration, rather than any mismanagement by the Buhari administration.
He said, “If there was still any honour left among thieves, there is no way the leaders of a party, under whose watch the nation’s economy suffered a monumental mismanagement and the Central Bank was turned to the ATM or piggy bank of a few people, will have the temerity to insult a government that is working hard to turn things around or the citizens, who are bearing the brunt of such mismanagement.
“It is now clear to all Nigerians that if the PDP had won the last general elections, Nigeria’s economy would not have survived one more month, considering the battering it received under the immediate-past administration.
“It is therefore unconscionable that those, who should show contrition and hunker down to avoid public opprobrium, are the same ones pointing an accusing finger at the Buhari administration.”
Mohammed added, “Senator Ekweremadu complained about the depreciation of the naira without telling Nigerians who ‘dollarised’ the Nigerian economy by bribing many individuals and groups with dollars during the last elections, thus inflicting a knock-out punch on the local currency.
“He also failed to tell Nigerians which government presided over the frenzied mop-up of dollars, either for ‘armsgate’ or for slush fund purposes, from the CBN, to a point where it almost ran out of the hard currency.”
The minister said even though the Buhari administration met an economy that was in a coma, it had refused to use that as an excuse for inaction.
He said the government had instead been working hard on measures that would turn the economy around and greatly offer relief to Nigerians by lifting millions, not thousands, of people out of poverty through a massive social intervention policy.
He stated, “The outcome of the months of hard work will manifest soon in the 2016 national budget that will give succour to millions of Nigerians who are reeling from the fallout of the solecism of the immediate past administration.”
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