Nigeria’s broke –Says Ex VP Atiku

Posted by admin Latest Politics Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

Unless the Federal Government puts the brakes on its current policy of uncontrolled spending, the nation risks going broke. This was the warning of former vice president and presidential aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. According to a statement by the Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organisation, the former vice president had severally alerted on the parlous state of the nation’s economy.

Similarly, Managing Director of the World Bank, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, and the Brettonwood institutions had also urged urgent interventions to stem the slide of the economy.

But rather than take heed of the alerts, the Jonathan administration, the statement said, had continued to play the ostrich and live in denial of the true state of the Nigerian economy. The PDP presidential aspirant warned yesterday that unless the uncontrolled spending and mismanagement of the economy by the Jonathan administration was checked, the nation risked going broke sooner than later. He noted that the Minister of Finance, Dr. Segun Aganga, and Governor of CBN, Lamido Sanusi Lamido, had acknowledged that, indeed, all was not well with the nation’s economy.

He said with inflation currently at 14% in Nigeria compared to the BRIC countries’ (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) 7-8% and sub-Saharan Africa’s around 7%), Nigeria might not attain the 2020 target of being one of the leading 20 economies in the world by 2020. Atiku noted that the current situation was also being exacerbated by rapid depletion of the external reserves with not much to show for it in terms of infrastructure and economic development.

He dismissed the claim of Aganga that Nigeria was currently one of the top 10 economies of the world as reminiscent of George Orwell’s Animal Farm in which presumed economic growth was only visible from pronouncements of government officials. He said in the first eight months of this year alone, the foreign reserves had gone down by $8 billion with its attendant impact on rising inflation.

The presidential hopeful noted that the CBN’s intervention in raising the MRR (minimum rediscount rate) by 25 basis points had not helped the situation, adding that since rates were raised, another $2.7 billion had gone from the reserves.wp_posts