Governor Godwin Obaseki says President Bola Tinubu is not the architect of Nigeria’s economic misfortune, blaming his predecessor Muhammadu Buhari for the shambolic state of the economy of Africa’s most populous nation. 

Mr Obaseki stated that the Buhari regime printed vast amounts of cash, making it “very difficult to tame inflation.”

“I think we should be fair to this current administration that they met a very poor economy. Putting it mildly, an economy where so much money had been printed and that had made it very difficult to tame inflation. So, we are faced with this series of problems,” the Edo governor said. 

Mr Obaseki added, “One is too much cash pursuing few goods. Two is our perennial dependence on foreign exchange from oil production, and oil production is declining because of lack of investments and thirdly, insecurity which has curtailed our ability to produce food in the quantities that we used to.

“So, faced with these three problems and a few others, it would be a miracle for anybody to turn this around within a year. So, from that standpoint, I think we should be fair to this current administration. Yes, the APC government created the problem, but trading blame won’t solve the problem, and we will still have a country to run.

“I think we should be focusing on what we need to do in the short term to solve some of these problems so that we can stabilise the country and then do what we need to do for sustainability in the long term.”

He was pessimistic that Mr Tinubu could turn the economy around in one year, stressing that “you cannot clap with one hand and expect to hear a loud sound.”

“The challenge is both monetary and fiscal. We have been utilising monetary tools, particularly monetary tools that could apply in a regular economy with the right pressure points,” the Edo governor noted. “Here, there is too much naira in circulation, and you want to mop up the naira by increasing interest rates? This means that people will not have access to credit.”

He advised that the federal government would have to address the country’s monetary and fiscal crises.

“We have got to focus on the real issues. First, the money that comes, how do we spend it? Let’s stop trading blame. The federal government is most responsible. They get 52% of the revenues of this country,” Mr Obaseki noted and asked, “Why blame the states that share only about 26 per cent? If the federal government behaves properly, then it will have the justification for controlling the states. So, rather than trading blame, I think the federal government must first call itself to order because it’s spending much more money that it doesn’t have.”