President Muhammadu Buhari has told Nigerians to brace up as the economy is in a terrible state.
The president stated this yesterday during a meeting with all the 36 state at the Presidential Villa, Abuja where he told them to redouble efforts in addressing infrastructural deficiencies in their respective states.
Addressing journalists after the meeting, the chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) and governor of Zamfara State, Mr. Abdulaziz Yari, said: “President Buhari told us that the economy is in bad shape and that we have to come together, think and rethink on the way forward.
“Mr. President as usual, responded by telling us that the economy is in a bad shape and we have to come together and think and rethink on the way forward.
“Mr. President talked to us in the manner that we have a task ahead of us. So, we should tighten our belts and see how we can put Nigerian economy in the right direction and how we can address the nation’s infrastructural decay.
“All of us as leaders, especially those that are coming to the national assembly and those coming back as governors and the President who will be re-elected, by God’s grace, we should not think that things are going to be easy; they are going to be harder than before. This was the message of Mr. President
He said the president blamed the previous administrations of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for Nigeria’s infrastructure decay despite huge petrol revenue.
“He (Buhari) wondered what happened in the past; that for the 16 years of the now opposition party, the PDP in power and with oil at 2.1 million barrels per day at an average of $100, many infrastructure are in bad shape,” Yari said. The governor said contrary to the president’s initial resolution not to make reference to the decadence that characterised the PDP leadership, “Buhari is compelled to bring those issues before Nigerians so that they can decide if it is best to bring the former ruling party back to power”.
“He is going to open a vigorous campaign and these are key issues that he is going to raise with Nigerians so that they can weigh their choices,” said Yari.
It was learnt that the alarm on the economy was informed by the provisional estimates for Nigeria’s Balance of Payments (BOP) in the third quarter of 2018 which showed that the overall BOP swung into a deficit of US$4.542 billion, compared to surpluses of $503.97 million and $2.787 billion recorded in the preceding quarter and corresponding period of 2017, respectively.
Also, the report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that the consumer price index (CPI), which measures inflation, increased to 11.28 per cent (year-on-year) in November compared to 11.26 percent in the preceding month.
