Is Jonathan or Buhari To Blame For Poor Economy

Rather than apportioning blame, I would consider the factors that are responsible for the economic challenges. There are two major factors to consider – external and internal problems.

The external factors are outside the control of the country but they have serious impacts on our economy. The collapse of the global oil market has a direct implication for the Nigerian economy. About three years ago, a barrel of crude was over $100. Now the same barrel is about $40. Oil is the main source of the revenue of the country.

Also related to this is the crisis in the Niger Delta, which has drastically reduced the volume we were producing a few years ago. We used to export over two million barrels per day. Now, we export 600,000 barrels below that quantity.

Secondly, the United States has become a major producer of crude. That used to be our market. The Nigerian Natural Liquefied Gas is not doing well as it used to because there are many other countries that operate in the market. Apart from that, the global economy has slowed down. If the global economy was doing well, there would be more demand for oil and gas. Demand for both oil and gas has fallen while supply has increased, causing a crisis in the market.

Because of several reasons, the inflow of foreign capital has gone down. That is another extraneous factor that is responsible for the current problems.

But more fundamental are the internal factors. And some of these factors originated from the immediate past administration. That is where I would blame the past administration for part of the problem. One, we did not prepare fully for the kind of economic crisis that we are confronted with now. Both our external reserve and excess crude account reduced drastically during the Goodluck Jonathan administration.

But the current administration cannot continue to hide under those challenges. We are over a year into the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. Yet, people are still asking – what is the economic direction of the country? Where is the document that one could look at to see our objectives, strategies and the coordination of the economic programmes that would take us to our destination? I cannot see any concerted effort or blueprint that would take us out of the problems.

Every government meets challenges. The responsibility of the government is not to emphasise those challenges but to bail out the country. President Barack Obama met challenges; the US’ unemployment rate was about 11 per cent when he came into the office. But that has dropped to about five per cent. There were policies and programmes to address the challenges. In the case of the Buhari administration, I have not seen any sense of urgency to get out of the challenges. We expected to see an economic document like the one developed by ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo when he came into power in 1999.