A former Presidential Candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria in the 2019 elections, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, has blasted the performance of the Buhari Administration, especially in terms of economic and social growth.
Dr Ezekwesili, who is a former Vice President of the World Bank, believes Nigerians have become poorer in the last four years.
“The economy is a complete disaster. What has happened since this government came into office has been a decline,” she said during an appearance on Channels TVs Politics Today on Thursday.
“First, we went into recession and went into -1. 8% GDP growth. Then we came out of it at 0.8% growth, then we climbed into 2.38 (and) now we are at 2.01. So, what it means is that as these lower levels of GDP growth rate are going on and our population (growth) rates are steady at above 2% – almost 3%, we actually are getting poorer.”
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Nigeria’s unemployment rate has been a source of complaints and led to criticism for the government.
A situation were millions of Nigerian have no jobs is a red flag for Ezekwesili, who explained that if the country was public quoted company it would have been put up for rescue operations.
“We are in serious trouble. If we were to be a publicly quoted company, we would have been put up for a special team to undertake a rescue operation on us,” she said.
“Do you understand what it means for us to have near 25 percent unemployment rate in the country; for more than 40 percent of our young people to be unemployed?”
According to her, it is critical for the government to get its economic policy right and if she is the President that will be a priority.
“Economic policy has to signal immediately to the market that we will be a government that enables and support the private sector to do what it must do, while we will invest in the most important area of human development, health and education because we need a productive citizenry,” she said.
