Economy & Politics
Restructuring: Plans must pass through legal process at the National Assembly – Tambuwal
Tambuwal has insisted that plans to restructure Nigeria and the Constitution must pass through due process from the National Assembly.
The Governor of Sokoto State and Former House of Reps Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, has said that any plan to restructure Nigeria and the Constitution must pass through legal due process from the National Assembly.
Tambuwal disclosed this at a plenary session of the 26th Nigerian Economic Summit, titled: “Building partnerships for resilience” in Abuja on Monday.
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Tambuwal warned that Nigeria must learn from mistakes 0f 2015 when the last attempt to amend Nigeria’s constitution was rejected after the first reading.
He added that any plan to restructure must be done after amending the constitution, which must pass through the assembly.
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“As it were at the moment, whatever you are going to do about the constitution, has been prescribed by the constitution and how you are going to do it.
“The constitution has prescribed how a word in that constitution is going to be amended.
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“Except of course we are saying we are going to jettison the National Assembly and the State Assemblies in getting it done, which is not possible,” he said.
“So you cannot go outside of the constitution to amend the constitution. We better come to terms with this realization and to come together and agree on how best we can work together to achieve what the nation desires,” he added.
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What you should know
The agitations from the October protests in Nigeria have revived talks about restructuring in Nigeria. Earlier this month, the Governors of Ekiti and Kaduna State, Kayode Fayemi and Nasi El-Rufai argued that restructuring was a means to end Nigeria’s economic troubles.
“In essence, our desire to build a more perfect union should be anchored on the principle of devolution of powers – that is, re-allocation of powers and resources to the country’s federating units.
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“The reasons for this are not far-fetched. First, long years of military rule have produced an over-concentration of powers and resources at the centre to the detriment of the states. Two, the 1999 Constitution, as has been argued by several observers, was hurriedly put together by the departing military authority and was not a product of sufficient inclusiveness.
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“All points considered, the fiscal burden of maintaining a largely inefficient and over-bloated bureaucracy is a metaphor for shooting oneself on the foot,” Fayemi said.
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Business
IMF lifts 2021 global GDP growth to 6%
The group also warned that economic recoveries are diverging dangerously across and within countries.
The International Monetary Fund has lifted its global growth outlook to 6% in 2021 (0.5% point upgrade) and 4.4% in 2022 (0.2 percentage point upgrade), after an estimated historic contraction of -3.3% in 2020 due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This disclosure was made on the organisation’s website on Tuesday.
The group also warned that economic recoveries are diverging dangerously across and within countries, as economies with slower vaccine rollout, more limited policy support, and more reliance on tourism do less well.
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What the IMF is saying
“The upgrades in global growth for 2021 and 2022 are mainly due to upgrades for advanced economies, particularly to a sizeable upgrade for the United States (1.3 percentage points) that is expected to grow at 6.4 percent this year.
This makes the United States the only large economy projected to surpass the level of GDP it was forecast to have in 2022 in the absence of this pandemic.
China is projected to grow this year at 8.4 percent. While China’s economy had already returned to pre-pandemic GDP in 2020, many other countries are not expected to do so until 2023.”
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On divergent recoveries
The IMF stated that divergent recovery paths are likely to create wider gaps in living standards across countries compared to pre-pandemic expectations.
“The average annual loss in per capita GDP over 2020–24, relative to pre-pandemic forecasts, is projected to be 5.7 percent in low-income countries and 4.7 percent in emerging markets, while in advanced economies the losses are expected to be smaller at 2.3 percent,” they said.
“Faster progress with vaccinations can uplift the forecast, while a more prolonged pandemic with virus variants that evade vaccines can lead to a sharp downgrade. Multispeed recoveries could pose financial risks if interest rates in the United States rise further in unexpected ways.“
For Africa, IMF forecasts economic growth of 3.4% in 2021 and 4% by 2022, Nigeria is expected to grow by 2.5% in 2021 and 2.3% by 2022, while South Africa is projected to hit growths of 3.1% and 2.0% for the respective years in focus.
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In case you missed it
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified some factors that hamper the economic recovery of low-income countries from the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic, factors including access to vaccines, limited policy space to respond to the crisis, the lack of means for extra spending, pre-existing vulnerabilities such as high levels of public debt in many low-income countries and sometimes weak, negative, total factor productivity performance in some low-income countries. These factors continue to act as a drag on growth.
