Former Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, has said that Nigeria needs to trim the unnecessary expenditure on its budget and redirect the economy towards a production-based one. He also warned that that the current recession would be worse than that of 2016, because debt raised by the administration was not properly invested.
Peter Obi disclosed this in a social media statement on Sunday and in an interview with Channels TV.
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For Nigeria to pull itself out of this economic recession, the 2nd in the last 5 years, there's a compelling need to cut the pork out of the budget and expenditure at all levels of govt and redirect the economy from a wasteful consumption-based one to a productive economy. -PO
— Peter Obi (@PeterObi) November 22, 2020
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“For Nigeria to pull itself out of this economic recession, the 2nd in the last 5 years, there’s a compelling need to cut the pork out of the budget and expenditure at all levels of government and redirect the economy from a wasteful consumption-based one to a productive economy,” he said.
He mentioned in his TV interview that Nigeria should emulate other countries trying to pull out of the economic mess by concentrating on improving monetary and fiscal policies.
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He said that the October protests were signs that politicians needed to sit up in order to arrest the situation before it gets worse.
“Every other country is discussing the recession and how to pull their people out of poverty. So, what we should do now is concentrate on the monetary and fiscal policies to start pulling people out of poverty.
“If you see what happened with the recent protests, you could see that we are heading into a problem. And I want our energy to be concentrated on that problem. The politicians, the class where I belong, should do more seriously, across party lines, to be able to arrest the situation before it gets out of hand,” he said
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He also stated that priority should be on putting food on the table now instead of discussing the 2023 elections.
“For me, it is in discussing how do we put food on people’s table. Elections will come and we can see how to select the best. But let’s deal with the recession we have just entered before 2023.
“This recession is going to be worst than in 2016 because the monies we borrowed then were not properly invested.
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“What we need now is to go into a vigorous regime of formulating implementable and measurable monetary and fiscal policies to drive ourselves out of the present situation,” he said.
What you should know
Nairametrics reported that Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in real terms declined by -3.62% (year-on-year) in Q3 2020, thereby marking a full-blown recession and second consecutive contraction from -6.10% recorded in the previous quarter (Q2 2020).
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Former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, had warned that Nigeria must stop borrowing for anything other than essential needs. He added that very non-essential line items in the proposed 2021 budget must be expunged in a bid to kick-start the economy from a recession.
Zainab Usman shd just go,our economy is terribly bashed and ppl r dying 9f hunger & hardship.Emefiele too has failed,still wondering y PMb still keeping ds 2 has has exhausted all they got instead situation keep worsening,cant imagine that a president will be on seat n watch his currency loosing value every other day,now $ is almost #500,pls its tym Buhari sack ds ppl &bring back Kemi Adeosun to revive d mattered economy since his team has failed woefully.