President Muhammadu Buhari has accused his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan of destroying the country’s economy.
This was contained in a statement signed by his media aide, Garba Shehu.
“With due respects to the former President Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, these are the facts about the economy you left behind, in case you have forgotten.
“I hope this will help to erase the wrong statement credited to you at your party, the PDP Convention at the Eagle Square last weekend that you handed to President Buhari a robustly healthy economy.
“To the same extent, this should also help to erase yet another false statement by Senator Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, the Caretaker Chairman of the party, to the effect that under the previous administration there was money but now things are very hard.
“Let me start by reasserting an obvious statement, which is that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration was handed an economy ravaged by years of mismanagement and corruption.
“The oil sector boomed under his tenure, with oil prices as high as US$ 120 and peace in the Nigeria Delta. Nigeria earned unprecedented dollar revenues. Sadly, that is where the story turns sour. There is nothing to show for the revenues earned, no major capital project was completed, neither power generation, road development, rail or agriculture benefitted from the windfall earnings. Rather the administration presided over the diversion of oil revenues on a such a massive scale, that even without the protection now accorded to Whistle blowers, the then Central Bank Governor blew not only a whistle but a trumpet. He was hurriedly shown the door.
“Meanwhile, the acquisition by public officers and their cohorts of private jets, luxury yachts and the accumulation of expensive property portfolios worldwide continued unabated. Indeed, the President once celebrated having the largest number of private jets, whilst our youth languished without jobs, our fields stood idle and our factories began the lay off of workers.
“The government simply reticulated oil revenue through personal spending by corrupt leaders, wasteful expenses and salaries. This was done rather than investing in what would grow the economy. Economies grow due to capital investment in assets like seaports, airports, power plants, railways, roads and housing. Nigeria can not record a single major infrastructural project in the last 10 years. In short, the money was mismanaged.
“At the inception of the current administration, 21 States were unable to meet their salary bills and the spectre of workers arrears had commenced. The PDP solution was the raid the Ecological Fund and selectively grant N2bn each to the PDP States. It was only aggressive borrowing by the Ministry of Finance under Dr Okonjo- Iweala that prevented Federal Government from also owing salaries. The economic wisdom of borrowing to pay recurrent bills is a questionable one, particularly as those paid would have included over 45,000 that have subsequently been removed by the Buhari led administration as ghost workers. It also included the lavish costs of chartering private jets, first class travel and other wasteful acts that have been eliminated under this administration.
“To compound the problem the government was borrowing heavily and owed contractors, and international oil companies. When this government took over we had accumulated debt back to the level it was before the Paris Club Debt Forgiveness.
“All these factors were building up to Nigeria heading for a major crisis if the price of oil fell. Nigeria did not have fiscal buffers to withstand an oil shock.
“The oil shock should and could have been foreseen. When Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS crisis started, it was clear that the United States of America wanted to cut off funds to terror groups by crashing the price of oil. When America granted permission for exploration of oil on land ( Shale) the warning signs were evident, but these were ignored by Nigeria’s economic managers.
“Such was the looting that even the goose that was laying the golden egg was being systematically starved. The direct contractual costs of oil produced, in the form of cash calls, remained unpaid. The incoming President Buhari’s welcome from the oil majors included demand for US$6Bn owed by Nigeria for oil that had already been sold or stolen.
“At the inception of the Buhari administration, 21 States were unable to meet their salary bills and the specter of workers arrears had commenced. The PDP solution was to raid the Ecological Fund and selectively grant N2Bn each to the PDP States. It was only aggressive borrowing by the Ministry of Finance that prevented Federal Government from also owing salaries. The economic wisdom of borrowing to pay recurrent bills is a questionable one, particularly as those paid would have included over 45,000 that have subsequently been removed by the Buhari led administration as ghost workers. It also included the lavish costs of chartering private jets, first class travel and other wasteful acts that have been eliminated under this administration.
“In summary, Nigeria earned a lot of money when oil prices were high but there is nothing to show for it. Now oil prices have fallen we are suffering.
What could they have done differently?
They could have begun doing the very things that the Muhammadu Buhari administration is doing so painfully now:
1. Fight corruption.
2. Sanitize the huge salary bill by eliminating payroll fraud.
3. Reduce wasteful expenses like First Class Travel and Private jets.
4. Encourage State Governments to reform their spending and build savings or investments.
5. Increase spending on capital projects especially on infrastructure needed to make Nigerian businesses competitive and create jobs.
6. Block the leakages that allowed government revenues to be siphoned into private hands.
7. Focus on key sectors ( apart from oil) that can create jobs and or generate revenue such as Agriculture, Solid Minerals, and Manufacturing.
“If these things had been done when the oil price was as high as US$120 per barrel, Nigeria would not be in the current predicament.
“We would not be suffering now if we had no cash reserves but we had power, or a rail system, or good roads, or good housing. But we don’t have money and we don’t have the projects either.
“Now that the oil has fallen below those levels, it is very difficult to do what is needed but they must be done to save Nigeria. There is no other way if we want to be honest.
“If PDP were still in power they would have continued deceiving people, by borrowing to fund stealing and wastage and the problem would have simply been postponed for future generations to face.
“One of former President Jonathon’s specific boasts is that dollar under him was N180 compared to today. With such a line of argument, it is clear why we are where we are. With oil prices as high as $120 the average inflow of dollars each month was high, making it easy to support cheap dollars. However, with oil price plummeting as low as $28, the fundamental laws of supply and demand dictated that the currency would need to adjust since oil was the sole export. It is instructive to note that virtually every major oil exporter has witnessed currency adjustments with the fall in oil price.
“The Buhari administration has taken a long term strategic view of supporting a stable naira on both the supply and demand sides. President Buhari has driven Import substitution to reduce demand for dollars to buy things we can produce thereby creating thousands of rural jobs in rice and other staples. In addition, there is a credible plan to diversify our revenue sources away from oil, with a focus on export crops as well as solid minerals, with the release of US$100M fund to develop solid mineral extraction.
The Time For Propaganda is Over. It Is Time For Proper Agenda! by Reno Omokri
The Presidency’s statement issued by Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant on media to President Muhammadu Buhari has only exposed why Nigeria is in an economic recession and is floundering in all spheres.
It is quite sad that Malam Garba Shehu does not know that oil constitutes only 15% of Nigeria’s GDP and thus a fall in the price of oil should not lead to a collapse of the Nigerian economy as has been experienced under President Buhari.
If Garba and his boss are willing to learn, the Jonathan Foundation and the Peoples Democratic Party can arrange a course for them to be tutored on the subject-how to grow your economy to be the largest in Africa. We make bold that we are experienced in that area.
When Mr. Shehu says “There is nothing to show for the revenues earned, no major capital project was completed, neither power generation, road development, rail or agriculture benefitted from the windfall earnings” he only further exposes his intellectual laziness and failing memory.
Obviously Garba Shehu has forgotten that when his boss was commissioning the Abuja-Kaduna 187KM fast railway that enables Nigerians work in Abuja and live in Kaduna, he was forced to admit that the project was conceived, built and completed by the Jonathan administration.
At that event, President Muhammadu Buhari said about the $1.5 billion project and I quote “This project was conceived by a previous administration, started by the last government”.
My question to Mr. Shehu is this-who is a liar between him and his boss?
I also urge Garba Shehu to take note of the fact that the only Federal University in his boss’s home state of Katsina was built by the Jonathan administration in addition to 13 other universities and 165 Almajiri schools built all over Nigeria. For people who don’t value education, I am not surprised that they see this as “nothing to show”!
It may also interest Garba Shehu to note that the Jonathan administration revived the moribund Nigerian Railways Corporation to the extent that the loquacious Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi was forced to confess on December 15, 2015 and I quote “In fact, I think we have a problem; most people don’t believe that the railway transport is functioning in Nigeria. I didn’t even know, until I started this tour, I never knew that the railway was functioning, it was even from his (MD’s) speech that I learnt that there are some coaches or services that go to Kano or Port Harcourt or elsewhere.”
These are just a few of the infrastructural legacies of the Jonathan era.
It is quite surprising that Garba Shehu now praises the former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, His Royal Majesty, Muhammadu Sanusi II.
Nigerians have not forgotten that it is the same Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, now Muhammadu Sanusi II who carpeted the economic policies of the Buhari administration, saying that under the Buhari administration, and again I quote, “There is one rate for petroleum marketers, there is interbank rate, there is another for money market operators such as western union, money gram, there is bureau de change rate and there is a special rate you get when you call the CBN for a transaction.”
My other question to Garba Shehu is this, how will an economy not collapse when you have multiple exchange rates?
Malam Garba and his boss continues to show that they are in over their necks by their statements. For instance, Garba says “At the inception of the current administration, 21 States were unable to meet their salary bills and the spectre of workers arrears had commenced. The PDP solution was the raid the Ecological Fund and selectively grant N2Bn each to the PDP States.”
Is it that Garba Shehu and his boss do not know that Nigeria is a federation and that the Federal Government cannot control the states? No wonder they are against restructuring and want to throw the report of the 2014 National Conference into the dustbin.
We have already proved that the accusation re the Ecological Fund is a lie and it shows desperation on the side of the Presidency to rehash it.
When that notorious liar, Nasir El-Rufai first made the accusation, we showed, with documentary evidence, that core PDP states like Akwa-Ibom, where the then chairman of the PDP Governors Forum comes from and Ekiti state which was the only PDP state in the Southwest, did not benefit from the Ecological Fund. Meanwhile, 10 states which were of the then opposition All Progressive Congress did.
Apparently, when Garba Shehu and Lai Mohammed speak, they speak their native language, lies!
Mr. Garba Shehu would do well to remember that his boss promised Nigerians 3 million jobs every year. Rather, according to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, 4.58 million jobs, created by the Jonathan led PDP administration, were lost in his boss’s first year.
Laughably, Garba Shehu cites the fight against corruption and the terror war as major achievements of the Buhari administration.
How can Garba Shehu reconcile his so called anti corruption war with the fact that Nigeria has made NO PROGRESS in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index under Buhari and in the latest CPI Transparency International said and I quote “Some other large African countries have failed to improve their scores on the index. These include South Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania and Kenya.”
On the alleged terror war, Nigerians will recall that President Muhammadu Buhari said that Boko Haram has been technically defeated.
My question is how can a defeated Boko Haram now have the ability to kidnap policewomen and oil explorers? How can a defeated Boko Haram attack military formations? How can a defeated Boko Haram carry out more suicide bombing a in the last eight months than at any other time in Nigeria’s history.
Has Garba Shehu forgotten that on July 6, 2017, the World Economic Forum named Nigeria as the fifth most dangerous country in the world? Or that on the 4th of February 2017, the United States Congress cited Nigeria as “the most dangerous place for Christians in the world”?
Garba Shehu can continue living in his fool’s paradise but he should give Nigerians more credit than to issue the pathetic tissue of lies that he called a response to former President Jonathan’s comments at this past weekend’s non elective Congress of the PDP.
Dr. Jonathan spoke generally about the positive impact of the PDP administrations on the lives of Nigerians and specifically on some of his exemplary achievements that made life better for the citizenry. He spoke about his reforms in the electoral process, transport, rail services, industrial and automotive policy, as well as the transformational impact of many other policies like YouWin, Youth Enterprises with Innovation (YouWin), bank verification number (BVN), the treasury single account (TSA) and the e-wallet system which were all measures designed to fight corruption.
The time for propaganda is long gone. Any body who wants to differ should speak to those issues raised, and not boasts about accomplishments that are not visible. The succeeding administration has been on the saddle for more than half of its four-year tenure.
This is the time for it to display its scorecard, especially since the blame game no longer connects with Nigerians. At some point under the PDP oil price fell to as low as $30 dollars and the party never cited that as a reason for non-performance.
It is up to Nigerians to determine if they are better or worse off today than they were in 2015, when former President Goodluck Jonthan left office.
Finally, I urge Garba Shehu to go back and read Malam El-Rufai’s memo to President Muhammadu Buhari where El-Rufai said, and I quote, “In very blunt terms, Mr. President, our APC administration has not only failed to manage expectations of a populace that expected overnight ‘change’ but has failed to deliver even mundane matters of governance outside of our successes in fighting BH insurgency and corruption.”
Reno Omokri (Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years: Chibok, 2015 and Other Conspiraciess)
for Dr. Goodluck Jonathan
President of Nigeria 2010-2015.
