Former presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Adewole Adebayo, has said President Bola Tinubu inherited a poorly managed economy from his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, which he likened to ‘an emergency room patient.’
Speaking on Channels Television on Tuesday, Adebayo noted that while Tinubu had managed to stabilise the economy to some extent, the root causes of Nigeria’s economic malaise remained unresolved.
“The economy that President Buhari left was poorly managed, and was an emergency room patient. What President Tinubu has done is to stabilise the patient, but I’m not sure he has managed to know the ailment. So the patient is not going to die imminently, but he hasn’t found a cure,” Adebayo said.
The SDP chieftain acknowledged some of Tinubu’s fiscal gains, particularly in reducing domestic borrowing and improving the government’s balance sheet.
“One, he’s managed to get more revenue, at least in nominal terms. And the borrowing, domestic borrowing that was the feature of President Buhari’s public finance, has reduced. So in terms of the balance sheet, Tinubu has managed to have a better balance sheet than Buhari left him,” he stated.
However, Adebayo stressed that the increased revenue remained inadequate in real terms to finance government spending and infrastructure, blaming what he described as wrong-headed policies.
The SDP candidate argued that Nigeria’s reported drop in inflation figures was more about statistical rebasing than genuine economic progress.
“They rebased the inflation. So if they say inflation has dropped to about 20-something per cent now, from 21.7% last month, it’s not because the economy is performing better but because the counting has changed. Let us see what happens by the first quarter of next year when they are implementing their budget,” he said.
Food Inflation Falls, But Citizens Not Feeling Relief
Adebayo also pointed to a decline in food inflation as one of the factors helping the Tinubu administration’s numbers, though he insisted that citizens were yet to feel the impact.
“Food inflation has dropped, and food inflation is a major component of the inflation basket. But not that those at home are going to feel it, because it hasn’t dropped to the level where they can feel it. It’s like trying to catch a bag of rice placed 10 feet above you; if it drops to 8 feet, your hand still cannot reach it, but it’s lower than before,” he explained.
Summing up, Adebayo said Nigeria’s economy was “slightly better numerically” than last year but remained a long way from full recovery.
“So in a way, the economy is not, in terms of these numbers, worse now than it was last year. Slightly better, but far, far away,” he concluded.
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