A faction of the Pan-Yoruba sociopolitical organisation, Afenifere, has reminded President Bola Tinubu that his policies increased hardship in the country.
The group loyal to late elder statesman Ayo Adebanjo stated this while reacting to a statement credited to Mr Tinubu saying Nigeria would have been bankrupt if he had not embarked on some tough economic reforms.
Recall that Mr Tinubu, while receiving a delegation of former National Assembly colleagues from the aborted Third Republic, said, “For 50 years, Nigeria was spending money of generations yet unborn and servicing the West Coast of our subregion with fuel.”
But in a statement issued by its Publicity Secretary, Justice Faloye, the association insisted the economic problems were self-induced.
They accused the Tinubu administration of making serious mistakes by removing subsidies before letting the Dangote Refinery come into operation as promised in his own manifesto.
The Afenifere advised that this is not about playing politics but saving the nation from “stifling poverty that is wrecking the nation at its seams with increased kidnappings, robberies, and other economic crimes.”
“The political class must realise that we are sitting on a keg of gunpowder that will explode when the poor can’t take it any longer. A stitch in time saves nine,” the group added.
Mr Faloye said Mr Tinubu should “never have floated the naira when we were still importing fuel that made up one third of our import bill.”
“These two ill-timed policies have cost millions their lives and livelihoods, so inflation rates, and not food prices decreasing, is medicine after death caused by criminal negligence of the government,” he said.
According to the group, the Tinubu administration’s reference to 50 years of economic decline “can be traced to when subsidy removal started in the seventies, which have regressively pushed us into poverty, the worst of which has been witnessed under his administration.”
“The problem has been anti-people economic policies. We are nowhere near El Dorado than we were in 1978 when education subsidies were removed, and he has placed our education on student loans.
“Fuel prices and other import costs could fall further if the amount saved from fuel subsidies is pumped into the forex market as done since January with $8b, although the ill-timed subsidy cut appears to have killed the golden goose, and we can never fully regain the true value of our currency due to economic mismanagement.
“Moreover, we should concentrate on creating true wealth and value instead of focusing on indices. Unfortunately, the administration is still in the dark on how to improve the living standards of Nigerians. Ideologically clueless on how to stimulate our consumer nor producer markets to create wealth.
“For example, houses are the root of the consumer markets, the ultimate good for the consumer. Unfortunately Nigeria has twenty million homeless people, the most in the world, yet only 20,000 houses were budgeted for in the 2025 budget, at which rate it will take 1,000 years to resolve our homelessness problem, assuming there is no increase in population. The government needs to budget for 20,000 a day like China and India, or at least 10,000 homes, to make any difference,” the statement said.
