‘You Applied Wrong Policies’, Ezekwesili Blames Buhari For Recession

Former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, says the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari applied “wrong economic policies” that plunged Nigeria into recession in 2016.

Ezekwesili said this on Monday while speaking on Channels Television’s breakfast programme, “Sunrise Daily” in Abuja, the nation’s capital.

Scorecard on President Muhammadu Buhari’s three-year-old administration was assessed during the programme.

She featured on the programme alongside Junaid Mohammed, second republic lawmaker, and Festus Keyamo, spokesman of Buhari’s re-election campaign.

In August, 2016, Nigeria entered its worst economic recession in decades after figured released by the National Bureau of Statistics indicated the second quarter 2016 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined by -2.06 per cent.

“If there is one thing I am against this administration for is that at the time they could have averted recession, if you did the right economic policies at that time, we would have averted the recession,” Ezekwesili said.

She said Nigeria did not act fast like some other Oil-producing countries.

“Many other Oil producing and exporting countries managed to avert the recession,” she added.

The former Education Minister said the recession left lasting effects in the lives of Nigerians.

One of the effects, she stated, was the prevailing level of poverty most Nigerians were subjected to.

“It (recession) costs us considerably huge effect on the populace. The truth is that we don’t yet have poverty number from the NBS. When you have the kind of shock that the combination of oil shock collapse and poor economic response to it occasioned, you would have dropped many more of your citizens into poverty.

“Considering the last data that we know of poverty rate from the NBS it is something in the neighbourhood of 60 percent, hundreds of millions of your citizens are poor. You don’t want to take any economic activity that would improve those numbers because that is disastrous,” she stated.

Ezekwesili also advised the Federal Government to build confidence in the minds of investors, with a view to attract them back into the country.