A former minister of Education, Dr Oby Ezekwesili and the minister of Interior, Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, have disagreed on the state of Nigeria’s economy.
Ezekwesili expressed concern over the sharp movement of Nigeria’s inflation rate from single digits to its current rate.
But the minister claimed that over the years, “we neglected too many things that should be production enablers, especially infrastructure.
Both of them spoke yesterday during a panel discussion on the economy as part of activities marking the ongoing Annual National Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association taking place at the International Conference Centre (ICC) Enugu.
Ezekwesili described inflation as the worst thing that would happen to the masses because they do not have buffer.
She also faulted the manner subsidy removal was announced, describing it as a badman show.
“I think that there was a badman show that was behind that whole ‘subsidy is gone’ there’s how to do reforms. So, clearly what then happened was that while the government was planning to realign with incentives towards production he was not taking the consequences that this will have in the short even to the medium run on the people within the society and so the poor are bearing the brunt of a realignment of price instability in the economy.
“I know that you have decided to discuss the economy because a whole lot of you are feeling the impact and that is as a result of price level that rose astronomically in this country. As of 2015, the inflation rate was single digit and that is 9% and fast forward years after, the inflation rate as at the time Buhari was leaving office was 22 %,and under the same party, inflation went to as much as 33% and in recent time, it is beginning to cool down but still at a level, where middle class is eroded.
“For the poor the worst thing you can do to them is inflation. They have no buffer, the poor don’t have buffer but lawyers do, and when inflation comes it hit them so badly.
“That is why the most important role of any central bank is this management of inflation. And what is it that is driving inflation – we are talking about fuel as commodity, one commodity base economy and it is same commodity that suffered that impact of a good reform that is done in a wrong way”, she stated.
But, the minister of Inferior, Tunjiojo Okubinm said there was need for a deep look at where the country was before the present administration came into office.
He claimed that over the years, we neglected too many thing that should be production enablers especially infrastructure.
The minister stated that previous administrations did not invest massively in infrastructure, while other countries were investing in infrastructure.
He noted that in 2022, we had a budget of N17.12 trillion in 2022. , adding that out of that only N4.89 trillion was on capital expenditure.
“Nigeria spent 4.29 trillion naira (10 billion dollars) on fuel subsidy. That same year, Nigeria spent 2.6 trillion (15 billion dollars) on forex subsidy. So what it means is that in year 2022, either subsidy on fuel or forex, Nigeria spent 25 US billion dollars on subsidy.
“Now that same year of 2022, we have to understand in the 2022; 96.3% of our revenue was paid on debt servicing. Meanwhile, a year earlier in 2021,Nigeria spent 82.3% of its revenue on debt servicing. When you spent that huge sum to service debt, what do you have for capital expenditure? this was the scenario and situation of what this government inherited.
“So over the years, we neglected too many things that should be production enablers and that is the fact because we neglected infrastructure. we look at Nigeria over the years for instance, education, you will realise that over the years, what we train is the education that prepares people for employment and not for entrepreneurship. So even the modus operandi of modern education is the same thing that we have?
“Now we decided to increase production and in doing this there must be security, there must be infrastructure. But to achieve this, we have decided to spend more on infrastructure than ever before. You can see that the rate at which population is growing with population surpassing the production growth, then there is a problem. The other way we can go about that is to increase productivity and invest massively in the state of infrastructure.
“We are actually far behind and we need to invest now because why we were busy spending the money that we didn’t have, other countries were busy looking for more money to invest for the future. We were investing in yesterday while other countries were investing in the future but the reality is here,” he stated.
He talked about the innovations in the immigration on passport application and procurement.
“There is a lot we can do. I want to say that the economy is not stupid but our choice, our priorities over the years is stupid because we promoted consumption over investment and production and we are doing our best now to correct these things”, he said.
