Govt blames poor economic situation on past mismanagement

To focus on revival of industries

THE Federal Government yesterday said the poor state of the country’s economy, especially the depreciation of the Naira, was the direct consequence of the mismanagement of the economy and the looting of the national treasury under the immediate past administration, rather than any so-called mismanagement by the Buhari administration

A statement on Sunday by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the if there was still any honour left among thieves, there is no way the leaders of a party under whose watch the nation’s economy suffered monumental mismanagement with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) turned into the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) or ‘Piggy Bank’ of a few people will have the temerity to insult a government that is working hard to turn things around or the citizens who are bearing the brunt of such mismanagement.
This is coming on the heels of President Muahammdu Buhari’s assurance that the revival of industries would receive the attention of his administration as soon as work on the 2016 budget preparation.

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu reported the President as giving the assurance at a dinner he hosted in honor of the visiting Alumni Association of the Indian Defence Services Staff College, (DSSC) Wellingon at which he received part of his military training.

The statement quoted Buhari as saying that very soon, “We will sit down to see how we can rehabilitate industries. We will do this in order to clear the problem of unemployment.”

He decried a situation in which 60 percent of the country’s 64 percent youth population was unemployed. “The situation, he said was extremely dangerous for our country.

The delegation was led to the President by the Indian High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr. Ghanashyam and it included a number of retired Indian army generals who were course-mates of the President.

According to the minister, it is now clear to all Nigerians that if the PDP had won the last general elections, Nigeria’s economy would not have survived one more month, considering the battering it received under the immediate past administration.

“It is therefore unconscionable that those who should show contrition and hunker down to avoid public opprobrium are the same ones pointing an accusing finger at the Buhari Administration,’’ he said.

Alhaji Mohammed described the comments credited to Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, that businesses may collapse in the next six months because the Buhari administration has mismanaged the economy, as the clearest indication yet that the PDP and its leaders are still in denial about the massive body blows they inflicted on the Nigerian economy.