Tinubu Took Over Dead Economy From Buhari – Soludo
BY EDMOND ODOK – With growing anxiety and tension over the bitting hard times in the country, Anambra State Governor, Charles Soludo says Nigeria is in this current situation because President Bola Tinubu inherited a dead economy from his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari
His remarks come less than two weeks after the National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu also claimed that the current administration took over a bankrupt country from the immediate past All Progressives Congress (APC) administration led by Buhari
The Anambra Governor, who spoke on the current Naira-dollar exchange during an interview on Channels Television programme, Politics Today, said part of the problem manifested in the fact that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was illegally printing money in total violation of the 2007 Act governing the financial institution.
“I said it before. This particular government inherited a dead economy from a microeconomic point of view, this government inherited a dead horse that was seen standing but people didn’t know that it was dead. I think it’s important for Nigerians to understand this”, the former CBN governor said
According to him; “We must realize where we were coming from. We sat here in this country and saw the monetary authorities literally printing money. And to prevent us from getting to where we are today, that was why we had an explicit clause that prevented the Central Bank from landing recklessly, granting ways and means to the federal government.
“We explicitly put into the law that you can’t grant the federal government more than 5% of the previous year’s actual revenue. And that so granted must be retired by the end of the year in which it was granted. And when the federal government fails to retire, the central bank is forbidden by that law from further advancing ways and means. That was the law 2007 Act of the Central Bank.
“But we sat all of us Nigerians watching the CBN illegally and brazenly violating that Act year-on-year and kept on printing money. That is when advance money is backed by nothing; you just credit the federal government with trillions N 4 trillion, N10 trillion, N15 trillion and we kept going.”
Soludo’s comments are against the backdrop of President Bola Tinubu’s recent acknowledgment that his administration inherited serious liabilities from his predecessors and that Nigeria has serious deficits in port and power infrastructure, as well as agro-allied facilities.
The President made the disclosure while negotiating a multi-billion dollar infrastructure finance facility from the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in Saudi Arabia earlier in the month
