Makarfi, Sani seek collective action to save economy

Caretaker Committee Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, has said that the way out of the current economic challenges does not lie in apportioning blames, but on the cooperation of all Nigerians.

This is just as the Chairman of Senate Committee on Domestic and International Debts, Shehu Sani, warned Nigerians no to see President Muhammadu Buhari as the messiah, arguing that, “on his neck hang the misdeed and gross inadequacies, mismanagement and misplacement of priorities of previous administrations.”

Although the two Kaduna political leaders spoke to The Guardian in separate interviews on the economic woes facing the nation, they agreed that Nigeria should be committed to the diversification of the economy to save it from collapse.

But Makarfi, who was also a former governor of Kaduna State, declared that the problems of current economic downturn “are a lot more structural and have been with us for a long time, even pre-1999.”

“Of course, there are issues that you can reduce to the last five, seven to 10 years or so. That is why I say it is a collective thing if it is a failure; because you can extend this failure to as far back as you can remember,” he stated.

The former governor noted that, “this is not the time to start apportioning blames,rather it is time to come together and salvage the country and do the needful,” adding that the nation’s problem is structural and requires all hands to be on deck to resolve.

His words: “We need to assemble our best in order to get our country out of this mess. In any case, people voted because they were dissatisfied with the last administration. If they were satisfied they would have returned all the past administration at all levels.

“Having not returned them because people believe that things will improve with this government, it is good to go forward and see what we can do and improve on our economy. It should not be seen as failure, to say look the issue at hand now requires that we should come together and salvage our country. In fact it is not a sign of failure”.

However, while blaming former leaders of Nigeria for present economic woes, Sani maintained that, “Nigeria’s economic recession today is the testimony of years of profligacy, of waste and lack of planning and vision.”