‘President inherited collapsed economy,’ Oyegun says

All Progressives Congress (APC) Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun has said that President Muhammadu Buhari inherited a collapsed economy from the previous administration.

Oyegun also blamed the country’s reliance on imported goods for the financial troubles currently being faced.

He made the comments during a recent interview with Vanguard. Excerpts below:

On the economy

Our party is very aware of the hardships that the misgovernance of the last 16 years has plunge this country. We are very aware of the hard and tough times that a lot of Nigerians are going through.

Apart from the party, let me also say that it is the main concern of Mr President. He is fully aware of the tough times that people are going through. And I want to give the assurance that everything is being done to better the economy and ameliorate the deprivation that people are going through.

I think that many Nigerians understand why things are the way they are and that the Buhari administration has inherited a prostrate economy.

Prostrate economy

Not just that, nobody envisaged that there will be a near total collapse of the price of crude and when you juxtapose that with our consumption habit, when we tend to import everything in quantity from toothpicks to the choicest champagne, all these products do put pressure on the foreign exchange stock of the nation and all of this has given rise to all the issues that are being dealt with by the president’s team.

But one needs to emphasize that as a nation, we got used to excessive consumption. We are not a producing nation. Virtually everything we have is imported, there is even a joke that some of our elites order pizza and such other things all the way from London.

So, all these things come from the same stock of foreign exchange that we have and they are quickly depleting given the collapse of crude oil.

We have to turn from a consuming nation to a producing nation. We consume because oil was there at a hundred plus Naira per barrel so money was all over the place but that is no longer the situation and so we must have to adjust to the new reality as a people and as a nation.

The president inherited a collapsed economy. You cannot start rebuilding a collapsed economy without clearing the debris and what we are doing today, is clearing the debris and at the same time; because when we listen to the radio, they say that all that is being done is war against corruption, but at the same time, the work of rebuilding and reconstruction of the Nigerian economy is rapidly in progress and I want to assure you that there will be plenty of successes in the next few months.

But I keep underscoring this that there is no quick fix, there is no automatic solution but the project are being concluded and things will get better in the next few months.

The party is aware and very conscious and sympathetic but it is a situation we did not create, it is a situation the government is managing but the good news is that there will be smiles tomorrow but we must be able to put up with current deprivation which has become inevitable.