"Jonathan and Buhari led Nigeria into recession"_Oby Ezekwesili

A former Minister of Solid Minerals, Mrs. Obi Ezekwesili, has accused the administrations of former President Goodluck Jonathan and that of the incumbent, Muhammadu Buhari, of leading Nigeria’s economy into recession.

According to her, the duo failed to adopt the right policies to deal with the crash in crude oil prices, which began in mid-2014, hence the ongoing economic crisis.

Ezekwesili noted that while Jonathan’s administration failed to do something about the impending recession before leaving office, the current administration equally failed to launch a comprehensive fiscal stabilisation programme on assumption of office in May 2015.

She spoke as the guest speaker at the inaugural Business Lecture of the Lagos Country Club in Lagos on Thursday night.

She said, “The parlous state of the Nigerian economy by the 29th of May, 2015 should have instructed an incisive and urgent macroeconomic stabilisation programme to realign the price levels in the economy. By May 2015, we knew we were already in trouble. As a matter of fact, we were already in trouble in 2014. That was the first time that growth collapsed to 3.8 per cent. The incoming administration should not have been told that we were weak and vulnerable.

“Had the government made quick and necessary adjustment that corresponded close enough to the level of impact of the 40 per cent decline in oil revenue, our story could have been different today. We would never have lost growth.”

Ezekwesili, a former Vice-President of the World Bank, further stated, “There is a new level that our post-2014 oil shock economy needed to find for stability. We needed a policy response that could have enabled that adjustment to happen immediately. That response could have helped the economy to absorb the shock. It could have reassured the investors. It could have reassured the consumers. It could have helped us to reasonably retain investor confidence in the economy, but that did not happen.”

She stated, “The attendant fiscal pressure and the delayed right policy responses were severe enough that by 2015, economic growth had sharply declined from 3.8 to 2.7 per cent. And then began the sharper loss of growth into negative growth rate by 2016. It was a major mistake that the economy did not get timely and right type of policies that could have helped us avoid the calamitous collapse into negative growth in the last three quarters of 2016.

source:daily post