Nigeria’s economy is broken – Atiku

chika ebuzor

September 29, 2016 9:27 AM

Atiku called for the restructuring of government’s finances, saying the economic model of Nigeria is not working.

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Former Vice-President,

Atiku also said the problem of Nigerian leaders is their continued focus on revenue generated from crude oil.

He also called for the restructuring of government’s finances, saying the economic model of Nigeria is not working.

His words: “ The biggest problem Nigerians have is their addiction to oil revenues; the belief that we are doomed unless oil flows and oil money fills the Federation Account for our tiers of government to share.

“I will go straight to the point: our economy is broken, and if we wait for the oil price to rebound or for crude exports to bounce back or for oil receipts to recover, we may wait for very long and may not be able to fix it.

“I say this because our constant complaints about the oil price, pipeline vandals and lack of funds tend to divert and distract us from the real challenges we are facing. To me, our economy is broken because our economic model doesn’t work, and to fix it we need the resolve to restructure our government finances so that we politicians have a real incentive to create a more conducive business environment.”

Atiku also described as wrong thinking, the mindset that the government cannot do anything because of the funds that were stolen by corrupt officials.

According to him, “And we have convinced ourselves, again wrongly, that the only reason that the Federal Government is unable to spend money to do all we expect it to do is that the money has been stolen. We must erase that mindset in order for us to begin to climb out of our current depths.

“We need Federal Government officials who are willing to step back and carefully work out how they can empower the private sector to grow the economy and create jobs.

And above all else, we need to understand that our most valuable resource is not our oil; it is our people. All of our people.”

Atiku Abubakar also called on the All Progressives Congress (APC) to live by the rules of internal democracy.

chika ebuzor