Jonathan Killed The Economy, Buhari Is Doing Worst- Oby Ezekwesili

Ezekwesili.

A former Minister of Solid Minerals and Education Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, has said the administrations of former President Goodluck Jonathan and that of the incumbent, Muhammadu Buhari, led the nation’s economy into recession by failing to adopt the right policies to deal with the crash in crude oil prices, which began in mid-2014.


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

She made this assertion known while speaking 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.

“The economic preferences did in fact worsened matters and set off a wave of uncertainties that dented investors’ confidence in the economy. So, it is accurate to conclude that both the preceding and successor governments conspired by their actions and inactions to throw the Nigerian economy into the deep throes of economic recession of which it must be rescued in order to avoid social implosion.”