On the first anniversary of Bola Tinubu’s presidency, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has criticized the ruling All Progressives Congress.
He points out that Nigeria has been stagnating under Tinubu’s regime and he labelled the current administration economic policy as a series of trial-and-error.
According to a statement titled, “Nigeria is not working: One year of Tinubu is a cocktail of trial-and-error economic policies,” released on Tuesday, his concerns were expressed by Atiku.
The president promised May 29th 2023 to remodel the economy and achieve growth through initiatives like creating jobs; ensuring food security; and reducing extreme poverty.
He went on to say that notwithstanding bringing up the issue of how to speed up the economy into $1trillion market value in six years while also solving the cost of living crisis, there was no blueprint for this economic ‘remodelling’ by President Tinibu. Instead, he put forward several policies including removal of PMS subsidies and introduction by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) a new foreign exchange policy which consolidated various official fx markets into one.
Atiku, who served as the presidential candidate for the People’s Democratic Party during previous elections, pleaded with President Tinubu to adopt policies that would help uplift the lives of Nigerians. He also noted that subsequent measures involved tightening monetary policy to control Naira liquidity, raising monetary policy rates, introducing cost-reflective electricity tariffs and imposing a cyber security tax.
Atiku however assured his commitment to Nigerian people when he dedicated himself towards improving well-being in the country.
He further outlined four major pitfalls which are associated with Tinubu’s reforms and he fears that if they are allowed to persist might negatively affect Nigeria’s growth and development in medium and long run.
He lambasted President Tinubu for making policies that make rich individuals richer while impoverishing citizens more, aggravating the cost-of-living challenge back to levels last seen during 1980s structural adjustment programme. Moreover, stated he, these have led to a hostile climate for business where private sector is grappling with reasons such as unworkable policies by government an increase in cost of production and complex exchange rate structure crippling manufacturing sector.
Afterwards, Atiku stated that Nigeria’s foreign exchange policies have failed to change the country’s current account positively, and Naira devaluation has not improved trade or stimulated competition among domestic producers. Finally, he said that these measures have not led to an influx of capital as expected in spite of the attempt to bring in foreign direct investments through the merging of the exchange rates and free floating of Naira. Atiku concluded by saying “We need to review these policies”.
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