*Poor response to nation’s challenges is setting stage for a prolonged and deeper economic crisis
The economy’s performance has, in recent weeks and months, been a subject of intense discourse among Nigerian citizens at home and abroad. Nigerians are gravely concerned, and rightly so, that Tinubu’s poor response to Nigeria’s economic challenges is setting the stage for a prolonged and deeper domestic economic crisis.
His economic policies, drawn from a so-called renewed hope agenda, are ironically dashing hopes, creating pain and causing despair. The private sector is shrinking by the day as small businesses are emasculated and as Multinational Companies, confused and weary of the economy, leave Nigeria in droves. The intense cost of living pressures has created more misery for the poor in towns and villages. There is HUNGER IN THE LAND as basic commodities, including BREAD, are becoming out of reach for average Nigerians.
His 2024 budget is a business-as-usual exercise, bereft of concrete ideas and actions that would support Nigeria’s journey toward economic transformation – consisting mainly of wasteful expenditures to cater to a bloated Federal Government. Budget 2024 will not facilitate growth and cannot empower our citizens to earn a living and live a decent life.
BAT has shown no capacity to deal with the adverse and disastrous impact of the new subsidy regime on the people and businesses and the new foreign exchange policy, which provides for a free-floating exchange rate. His initiatives are literally uninformed, arbitrary, and chaotic. BAT’s palliatives are too mean, pitiable, and contemptuous of the poor. He seems genuinely lost, bewildered, and overwhelmed.
To mask their failures, BAT and his political appointees are busy blaming his predecessor in office for bequeathing a ‘dead’ economy. This is a familiar game popularised by former President Buhari while in office. It reinforces what we already know: that BAT came into office unprepared.
Tinubu and his economic management team must swallow their pride, admit their missteps and failures, and follow those who know the terrain. They must act fast before the economy sinks deeper into the abyss.
The question is, will they?
*Atiku Abubakar
Vice President of Nigeria, 1999-2007
4th February, 2024
