Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State says the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu “inherited a dead economy,” which accounts for the current state of affairs in Nigeria.
Commenting on the current Naira-dollar exchange during an interview on Channels TV’s Politics Today, Soludo, a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), said part of the problem was that that the apex bank was illegally printing money in total violation of the 2007 Act governing the financial institution.
Tinubu, speaking while seeking multi-billion dollar infrastructure finance facility from the Islamic Development Bank in Saudi Arabia earlier in the month, said his administration inherited serious liabilities from his predecessors. National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu, told the military in Abuja penultimate Monday that Tinubu inherited a bankrupt Nigeria.
Echoing bothe the NSA and Tinubu, Soludo said: “We must realize where we were coming from. We sat here in this country and saw the monetary authorities literally printing money. And to prevent us from getting to where we are today, that was why we had an explicit clause that prevented the Central Bank from landing recklessly, granting ways and means to the federal government.
“We explicitly put into the law that you can’t grant the federal government more than 5% of the previous year’s actual revenue. And that so granted must be retired by the end of the year in which it was granted. And when the federal government fails to retire, the central bank is forbidden by that law from further advancing ways and means. That was the law 2007 act of the Central Bank.
“But we sat all of us Nigerians watching the CBN illegally and brazenly violating that act year on year and kept on printing money. That is when advance money is not backed by nothing; you just credit the federal government with trillions N 4 trillion, N10 trillion, N15 trillion and we kept going.
“I said it before. This particular government inherited a dead economy from a micro economic point of view. This government inherited a dead horse that was seen standing but people didn’t know that it was dead. I think it’s important for Nigerians to understand this.”
