‘President not responsible for recession,’ El-Rufai says

monjola sotubo

December 16, 2016 1:09 PM

El-Rufai said further that the current crisis was caused by mismanagement of now scarce resources by previous governments.

President Muhammadu Buhari and Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai.

Kaduna State Governor,

The governor made the comments on Thursday, December 15, after a meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC) in Abuja.

“When people say that this administration has impoverished them, I think they are not being charitable, because I have said that we inherited a governmental structure at state and federal levels built around the assumption that price of oil will remain at $100 per barrel,” he said according to The Cable.

“By the time we took over, prices dipped to as low as $26 per barrel. Now, when 80 per cent of government revenues depend on the price of oil and the quantity of oil you sell reduces, you must expect a cut in your consumption if the price collapses.

“If your own household your salary is slashed by 80 per cent, what do you do? There is painful adjustment in the funding. You have to seek your family and explain to them that this is what is happening; your salary has been slashed by 80 per cent, so rice is off the table and it is now ‘garri’ and so on.

“This is what Nigeria is going through. Essentially, our revenues have collapsed by about 40 per cent to 60 per cent if you compare it with, say, 2014. This collapse happened because the price of oil has moved from a high of $140 a barrel around 2013 to a low of $26 per barrel in February 2016.”

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El-Rufai also said that Buhari is now left with the responsibility of cleaning up the mess made by previous governments.

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