₦airaland Forum

GeneralDae:
What academic record should he release to the public again?
He submitted both his Richard Dalley College school entry qualification plus his Chicago state university certificate to INEC. Atiku said they are fake and it's impersonation. He went there again to bring the Transcripts. Politics aside, don't you see it's Atiku fooling himself here?

How much does Tinubu pay his social media trolls now? I gather that he pays more than the 30k per month that was being paid to BMC trolls.

GeneralDae:
Tinubu didn't submit any WAEC result even in 1999. He never claimed to write WAEC. He claimed to have gotten admission through Richard Dalley College where he studied accounting for a year which allowed him gain admission into CSU to study Business administration and major in accounting.
So are you saying he impersonated the girl at Richard Dalley College or when and who is this girl?

So let him produce the results with which he got admission into Richard Dailey College if he has nothing to hide, is that too much to ask? Or will it expose the fact that Tinubu is using a stolen identity.

GeneralDae:
He has submitted the required documents already. Atiku's petition was that he forged his University result and impersonated a girl. He has gone to get relevant documents to show that is not the case.

Atiku never mentioned in his petition that Tinubu impersonated the girl in order to get admission but rather that Tinubu used the girl's University certificate. But now Tinubu has gone to bring certified copies of his school records, Atiku knowing he would lose has changed his claim saying the impersonation was before and he wants to see the documents Tinubu used to gain admission.

Can't you see how ridiculous and funny all these are?

You are obviously the one being ridiculous, if Tinubu has nothing to hide, he should allow them have access to his educational records.

GeneralDae:
Oh my god. You are telling me the University were misled by Tinubu who allegedly impersonated a female, used the female's brain to graduate with Honours, go into mobil and after some years became a Treasurer there, all with the female's brain?

What's more ridiculous? The school didn't discover this all these years and Atiku is that detective who would eventually open their eyes? 😂😄

Gosh, pending unforeseen circumstances, I think I'm done with this argument.

If Tinubu doesn't have anything to hide, he should just allow his educational records to be made public instead of all this thrash that you are writing. Criminals like Tinubu have been gaming the system for ages so there is nothing new in people using fake results to gain admission into university. Whether he graduated or not or he worked in Mobil is irrelevant. Once it's confirmed that he got admitted with fake results, his degree will be nullified and he won't have the minimum WASC required by INEC to run for president.

blabulu2000:
So, let response by saying...can you entrust your academic record to.your political enemies.....?/

It is logical....if yes....lemme know

By law once you opt to contest for public office, you have to submit documents your claimed academic records to INEC where they become public documents. If you have something to hide about your academic records, you have no business contesting for public office.

GeneralDae:
The records are before the Appeal courts already. Collected by Tinubu and certified as recently as June 2023.

What Atiku is asking for are the educational records with which Tinubu gained admiration into Chicago State University and not whether he allegedly graduated from the university or not. His admission records will expose the fact that Tinubu is using a stolen identity because the records show that it was a female that was admitted into the school.

DoTheNeedful:
As long as he attended CSU, there is no problem. The educational system in Nigeria is totally different from US. That Atiku is trying to ask questions about his WAEC is laughable. In America, there is what they call homeschooling, whereby people might not go to conventional schools till they get into the university.

I believe even if Tinubu didn't finish secondary school in Nigeria, he could still have gotten admission into universities in America. There are so many differences between how education works in America and in Nigeria.

I am all for kicking out Tinubu if he's proven to have rigged the election. However, I don't appreciate trying to remove someone from offices using backdoor means like this. What I see here is pure hatred or jealousy of someone.

What if it is confirmed that he used a stolen identity to gain admission into the university or used fake documents, will you still be ok with it?

GeneralDae:
Tinubu first attended Richard Dalley College in Chicago to pass a pre exam that qualified him for University. I don't know if he wrote any WAEC and I'm not sure he ever claimed to have written one.

If he truly attended the schools he claimed to attend, he shouldn't be afraid of his school records being made public.

GeneralDae:
Atiku is wasting his time. He should start preparing for 2027 and this time convince Obi to be his running mate.

The question remains why Tinubu is afraid of his educational records being released if he doesn't have anything dirty to hide?

https://twitter.com/MissPearls/status/1692440710908416288?t=NCrQQiTAXuckM2a_yDBgAQ&s=08

Something very INTERESTING is happening with the Atiku/BAT’s case in the USA.
A lot of people don’t really know the details but I took my time, went through court documents, did some more researches and brought you a summary.

WALK WITH ME!

So, Atiku’s case in the USA is perhaps the most IMPORTANT part of the electoral Jigsaw puzzle on qualification of BAT for the following reasons:

- One of the constitutional requirements to qualify for election as president in Nigeria is to be educated up to at least the school certificate level or its equivalent.

- BAT listed and submitted Chicago State University (CSU) as the only school he attended on his INEC form EC9. This satisfies (or is equivalent to) the requirement of the constitution.

- Atiku’s US case aims to lift the veil on the foundational documents BAT used to qualify for and gained that admission

- Yes, you guessed right. Documents like transcript, biodata, WAEC result, testimonial from previous school (s) etc.

In summary all such documents that laid the foundation upon which BAT’s subsequent qualifications were built, if they exist, are covered by that subpoena Atiku is in court for.

- If it is confirmed that BAT’s foundational educational documents belonged to someone else i.e a female and that he appropriated someone else’s identity to gain admission into CSU, it would mean that ALL subsequent qualifications built on it, will collapse like a pack of cards due to identity theft/fraud.

CSU will have no choice than to withdraw any certificate awarded to that identity if they are properly petitioned.

- It will definitely become an international scandal (imagine the headlines : Nigerian NARCO Bagman President also guilty of Identity theft)

- On the home front, with the international collapse of his CSU certificate and exposure of the fraudulent foundational documents, he will fall short of that sacred constitutional requirement of being educated up to school certificate level or its equivalent, as there will be NO evidence to prove otherwise (He go explain tire 😊)

- The courts won’t need to ask any questions. From what he filled in his form EC9, he already submitted that he had no other qualification. If CSU certificate fails then he is AUTOMATICALLY deemed as not qualified in the eyes of the Law.

- An international scandal of such dimensions would force the Supreme Court’s hand. If it becomes a notorious international fact that BAT does not have a WAEC/School Cert result or it’s equivalent, they’ll have no choice but to apply the constitution in its strict sense to DISQUALIFY him.

- This is why TINUBU is FIGHTING SO HARD through his Lawyers to prevent this records from being released to the Atiku team

He does not want the Nigerian people or the world to know that HE DOES NOT HAVE THE MINIMUM WAEC QUALIFICATION or ITS EQUIVALENT! and that the documents he’s been parading belong to someone else!

- Atiku is a very ‘wicked adversary’ 😂

He wants to help Nigerians solve a TRANSGENDER mystery.

He will do this by dragging A BAT from the Darkness of Nigeria’s murky politics to the LIGHT of international embarrassment.

We All Are Watching!

—Courtesy @PearlssTV / @MissPearls

#AllEyesOnTheJudiciary

The rodents are trying to put all the blame on Emefiele but the truth is that the couldn't have done so much damage without the active connivance and support of that Dunce from Daura.

Buharig's administration will go down as by far the most corrupt and disastrous administration in the history of the country if Tinubu is not removed by the tribunal and allowed to break his ignoble record.

A few comments on CBN's financials:

1. Financial Statements since 2015
CBN's financial statements since 2015 were audited and signed by the Auditors but some forces in CBN or government decided not to release them. I will show you why they didn't want to release them.

2. External Reserves
(a) External reserves on the audited account as at end of December was $32.4 Billion (this includes Gold Bullion of $1.3 Billion). However, external reserves on CBN's website on 31 December 2022 was $37 Billion. That's an overstatement of $4.7 Billion!

(b) CBN had pledged $7.5 Billion in external reserve to Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan in exchange for cash.
The impact of this transaction is that the actual value of external reserve is $24.9 Billion ($32.4 - $7.5).
This transaction, though may not be illegal, is quite pricey and has cost the CBN $691 Million in interest over 5 years.
Securities lending is usually for short term liquidity management, but CBN has been on this one for quite a while.

(c) CBN had a foreign currency forward payable of $6.8 billion as at December 2022. Netting this against $24.9 billion gives a truer picture of external reserves of $18 Billion.

(d) To summarize, CBN's website showed $37 Billion but the true picture is $18 Billion.

3. CBN's Overdraft to FG - N23.18 Trillion
The ways and means balance has been in the news for quite some time but now we have an audited document to prove it. CBN exceeded the statutory limit of ways & means by N22.9 Trillion. By law, CBN was only allowed to loan FG N252 Billion (5% of FG's revenue).
However, CBN made a paper income of N1.9 Trillion on this overdraft. The question is, at what cost?

4. Credit Losses - up by 76% to N875 Billion
There are no details of assets being impaired in the account, but a possible asset that could have suffered huge impairment is the balance on the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP).

5. Staff Loan
Staff loan has grown dramatically since Emefiele took over CBN. Staff loan grew by 200% from 13.7 billion Naira in 2014 to 41 billion Naira in 2022. No details about who took what, but that's a huge jump there.

6. CBN is not insolvent.
A quick way to assess solvency is by checking an entity's net asset. CBN has grown its net asset over the past 5 years.

Do central banks go bankrupt? 🤷
- Bukola Oyeboade @ooyeboade

Lakeside247:
How much is it to bake a black Toyota Highlander 2004? No panel work

Thanks so much for the inquiry, it will cost 120k to get it done.

APC is a very shameless party full of notorious criminals from Tinubu to even their supporters. In fact to be a member of APC, you must be confirmed to be extremely corrupt.

Even though I support the protest, these are the same hypocrites that refused to protest when Buharig was busy destroying the whole country.

Very daft, poorly scripted and uninspiring speech.

Stillkrug:
We're once third fastest growing economy under gej since buhari enter everything change ,it shall not be well with buhari and his supporters

It was actually under Obasanjo that we were the third fastest growing economy in the world, under GEJ, the growth rate slowed down considerably but Nigeria got the recognition of being the biggest economy in Africa which was mostly as a result of the growth enjoyed during the Obasanjo years

According to this projection, Nigeria has the capacity to become the fifth biggest economy in the world within the next fifty years.

Personally, I believe that we have the potential to achieve the feat within the next thirty years but we may never achieve our potential as long as we keep allowing our very worst to be in the driver's seat of the country's leadership.

To achieve this, we will have to put in place successive leaderships that have a growth mindset and prioritizes developing our human capital to be able to effectively harness the huge resources our country has been blessed with.

We need to continually promote policies that will stimulate productivity within the economy and by so doing, we will not only be creating jobs for our people but we will be creating wealth for the generations coming after us.

Nigeria is truly blessed, it is up to us to unlock the huge potentials that is inherent in the country.

yarimo:
Losers and silly excuses are like 5 and 6

Election riggers and their ass lickers are also like 5 and 6.

PRESS RELEASE

There’s a sinister plot to undermine Nigeria's judiciary, democracy - Atiku

*Calls on Nigerians to be vigilant, puts international community on alert

Since the conclusion of the presidential election in February of this year and the attendant controversies in its trail, there have been unfortunate developments that are saddening to many Nigerians.

It is needless to say that the election that brought the current government into office is the worst in the annals of democratic politics in our country, even though it was promised to be the best ever.

Consequently, the outcome of that election and the arbitrariness of the electoral umpire to declare a winner against the requirement of the law has been the reason Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President of Nigeria (1999-2007) and Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party and other parties in the election have chosen the patriotic path to challenge the outcome of that election.

It is a truism that the judiciary is the only reasonable option in the quest for justice. As a matter of fact, our judiciary and the interpretations that they have given to our laws have been a major building block in our democratic journey so far.

Our laws are very clear about the prerequisite of separation of powers as a guarantee of an independent judiciary.

The idea behind that concept of an independent judiciary is to insulate that branch of government from unholy fraternity between its hallowed members and the rest of the society - especially the political actors.

But as proceedings on the controversial February 25 election continues at the court, there have been threats from the ruling party that aim to intimidate the judiciary from serving the duty of justice.

It is regrettable that the APC and, indeed, agents of President Bola Tinubu have ceaselessly chosen to stand in the way of justice by making catastrophic threats to anarchy if justice is not served according to their whims.

These and reports in the media about some heinous plots to harass justices sitting on the petition are ominous to peace and the security of our nation.

Our democracy gives the people of Nigeria the powers to choose their leaders, and our laws demand that our judiciary must be allowed to act independently without harassment and intimidation by the government or powerful interests.

To compromise the workings of our democracy and seeking to compromise the workings of our judiciary is an open call for anarchy.

As a party in the litigation that is currently reviewing the outcome of the last presidential election, we wish to express our intentions to do all that is within the law in resisting any attempt to undermine our fragile democracy.

Indeed, we are using this channel to call on the international community to be alerted.

Nigeria’s democracy should not be undermined by using the judiciary to serve the interest of the ruling party.

Sadly, this has become the stock in trade of the All Progressives Congress to intimidate the judiciary.

Recall that in 2019, the APC-led Federal Government similarly removed the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen, when it was obvious that he would not bend to their will.

The Department of State Services similarly stormed the homes of judges in 2016 and 2017, all in a bid to beat the judiciary into submission.

“The plot of the APC is simple: intimidate the judiciary, threaten judges with arrest so that they will bow to their will. This is a playbook from 2019 when they removed the CJN and then replaced him with Tanko Muhammad, who himself was later accused of corruption by his colleagues at the Supreme Court and resigned shamefully.

“However, the APC government never went after Tanko Muhammad as they did in Onnoghen's case because it was never about corruption but election. The APC has, over the years, built a reputation of judiciary intimidation. They accused about 10 judges of corruption, stormed their homes, and got them suspended and yet could not convict a single one of them. Justice Sylvester Ngwuta of the Supreme Court could not recover from the embarrassment that he ended up dying in office.

“Now, they have initiated a new plot. This time around, they want to intimidate the judges into delivering favourable judgments for them at the election tribunal. We draw the attention of the international community and, indeed, Nigerians to this fresh plot to steal the mandate of over 200 million people.”

We are also urging Nigerians to abide by the golden rule of eternal vigilance being the price of liberty.

On this note, we appeal to all security agencies in the country to remain professional in the discharge of their duties and resist being used as an instrument of oppression and intimidation against the judiciary.

Signed:
Paul Ibe
Media Adviser to Atiku Abubakar
Vice President of Nigeria (1999-2007) and Presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party in the 2023 election.
Abuja
22nd July, 2023.

Very fraudulent and manipulative news, Nigeria became the biggest economy in Africa when the economy was rebased during the Jonathan administration in 2013 and this was achieved as a result of the rapid economic growth rate experienced during the Obasanjo administration.

nairalandkachy1:
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/609586-just-in-tinubu-writes-senate-seeks-approval-for-800m-loan-requested-by-buhari-from-world-bank.html

Previous Thread:
https://www.nairaland.com/7684308/buhari-seeks-senate-approval-800m#123052951

This rodent wants to continue with Buhari's cluelessness and indiscriminate ways of borrowing money recklessly.

beerfraud:
https://twitter.com/renoomokri/status/1679397629954867200

Yet they make the most noise about being the biggest business operators in the whole of Nigeria.

CodeTemplar:
Hit the ground running and run the system aground. The hallmark of corky cluelessness.

He is not only clueless but also arrogant about his ignorance. You don't announce and implement such policies without proper planning.

*Fuel subsidy removal: The wrong ‘courage’ possessed Tinubu - Businessday NG*
https://businessday.ng/columnist/article/fuel-subsidy-removal-the-wrong-courage-possessed-tinubu/

Olu Fasan
July 10, 2023.

For over eight years, since I started writing a weekly column in this newspaper in 2014, I repeatedly called for the abolition of the fuel subsidy. It distorted the economy and fed massive corruption.

So, when, on his first day as president, Bola Tinubu scrapped the subsidy, I should be thrilled and excited. But, no, I wasn’t. Why?

Well, as a political economist, I know the dynamics and interplay between politics, economics, and institutions.

The right economic policy under the wrong political conditions or the wrong institutional process, will lack credibility and efficacy.

In policy making, there’s a distinction between substance and process: substance is “what to do”, that is, the nuts and bolts of a policy; process is “how to do it”.

How could Tinubu be “possessed with courage” to announce a policy with far-reaching consequences for ordinary citizens without adequate consultation, preparation and remedial measures?

Both must work in sync; otherwise, there’s a risk of failure. Tinubu broke the link between substance and process!

Tinubu went to his inauguration on May 29 without the intention to scrap the fuel subsidy from DAY ONE!

Rather, his prepared speech referred to “phasing out” the subsidy, in line with his manifesto, “Renewed Hope 2023”, which says on page 37: “We shall phase out the fuel subsidy.”

Indeed, the manifesto linked the removal of the oil subsidy to the Dangote refinery, saying: “By the time we took office, the Dangote refinery would have been fully operational, nullifying the need to import refined petroleum”, adding: “There will be no need for a subsidy because supply will come from local refineries.”

But, as at today, Nigeria is still importing refined petroleum. So, the preconditions set out in Tinubu’s manifesto for completing scrapping the fuel subsidy haven’t been met.

Yet, despite his prepared inauguration speech merely referring to “phasing out” the subsidy, Tinubu blurted out: “The fuel subsidy is gone.”

Later, during his recent trip to France, Tinubu told the Nigerian community in Paris what actually happened.

He said he did not discuss the automatic removal of the fuel subsidy with his aides before the inauguration and did not include it in his speech.

Then, he said: “When I got to the podium, I was possessed with courage, and I said subsidy is gone.”
Really? “Possessed with courage”?

What kind of courage possessed Tinubu to behave like an autocrat? In a democracy, the cause cannot simply excuse the leader and justify the means.

The fact that a cause is right doesn’t mean it can be pursued by just any means. How could Tinubu be “possessed with courage” to announce a policy with far-reaching consequences for ordinary citizens without adequate consultation, preparation and remedial measures? Such capriciousness is the stock-in-trade of dictatorships!

Now, let me repeat what I have said many times in this column. Even if the Supreme Court validates Tinubu’s election, his administration is a minority government.

He has the weakest mandate of any president since 1999, even ignoring the gaping credibility deficit of that mandate.

The overwhelming majority of the electorate, 63.39 per cent, did not vote for Tinubu. If he governs with arrogance, he will, sooner or later, find that merely satisfying constitutional technicalities are different from having a strong mandate and legitimacy.

In political economy, the mandate hypothesis says that a government has greater scope for big bang reforms if it won a strong mandate for change in an election.

Surely, running a minority government with a weak mandate, Tinubu must govern with humility and build genuine consultation and national consensus around critical reforms.

Ideally, he should form a broad-based national unity government. Unfortunately, he’s pursuing a Machiavellian, divide-and-rule strategy with Nyesom Wike’s fringe group, whose dubious contributions to his “victory” did not extend his votes beyond the disputed 8.8million out of 23.4million valid votes, meaning that 14.6 million, or 63.39 per cent, of the voters rejected him!

Yet, there’s another damaging political context. Recently, former President Muhammadu Buhari said he amended the Petroleum Industry Act 2021 and delayed the fuel subsidy removal “to allow Tinubu to win the election.”

Buhari said that if he had withdrawn the fuel subsidy, the “social consequences” would have lost Tinubu the election. “Polls after polls showed that the party would have been thrown out of office if the decision as envisaged by the new Petroleum Industry Act was made,” he said.

So, Buhari manipulated the law and policy on fuel subsidy removal to “allow Tinubu to win the election”. But once Tinubu “won”, he was “possessed with courage” and spontaneously scrapped the subsidy, ignoring the social consequences that Buhari said would have cost him victory.

Essentially, if Buhari must be believed, Tinubu “won” the election on a deception, on a lie. That makes the whimsical arbitrariness of his autocratic decision to remove the fuel subsidy on his first day in office even more politically unacceptable. It’s a political fraud!

What about the crass hypocrisy? In her book Fighting Corruption Is Dangerous, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Finance Minister, and current Director-General of the WTO, describes the visceral opposition to President Goodluck Jonathan’s plan to phase out the oil subsidies in 2012.

The opposition was led by Tinubu’s then party, Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN. In a recent article titled “Fuel subsidy and the God of Jonathan”, Dr Reuben Abati, then President Jonathan’s spokesperson, also described the viciousness the opposition, and referred to an article written by Tinubu in 2012 titled “Removal of oil subsidy: President Jonathan breaks social contract the people.”

In the article, published in his newspaper, The Nation, on January 11, 2012, Tinubu took a stance against the phasing out of the oil subsidies.

Yet now that Tinubu is in power and needs money for his administration, he’s consumed by a latter-day zeal to tackle the fuel subsidy. Such dishonesty, hypocrisy and opportunism would undermine the credibility of any policy, even the right economic policy.

But how far can Tinubu go? The fuel subsidy fraud became acutely endemic under the administration of President Buhari, who was the Minister of Petroleum during his two terms in office. Buhari certainly knew, but did nothing, about the subsidy scam.

In his recent widely publicised interview on Channels TV, former Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State said that a friend of his in the oil industry told him that he told the president: “Mr President, please remove this subsidy. We are tired of making money!”

So, how far can Tinubu go? Can he go beyond scrapping the fuel subsidy and probe the subsidy racket to recover money from the oil scammers?

Unfortunately, Tinubu won’t be possessed with such courage! For, as David Pilling, Africa Editor of the Financial Times, wrote recently, “Tinubu has appeared to epitomise all that is wrong with Nigeria’s governing class.”

Recently, Tinubu said: “I could have asked for my share of the fuel subsidy, but that’s not why you elected me.” Consider his words: “My share of the fuel subsidy”.

Tinubu said he wasn’t elected president to benefit from the fuel subsidy, but was he elected governor to enrich himself from the resources of Lagos State through Alpha Beta, as alleged?

Even former President Olusegun Obasanjo couldn’t help asking recently: “Why did he set up Alpha Beta?”

Truth is, Tinubu simply lacks the credibility to be sanctimonious, and Nigerians must be watchful!

So, here’s the question: how would Tinubu account for the $10bn annual savings from the subsidy removal?

Recently, the World Bank said that “inflation has driven 4million Nigerians into poverty”. That’s in addition to the nearly 100million already in extreme poverty.

How would Tinubu tackle the social consequences of the subsidy removal? Surely, if he was possessed with courage to scrap the subsidy, he must be possessed with courage to deal with the social fallout!

.

Demosdewi:
Please, how much do I get to oven bake Corolla 2003 ?. And how long to complete the job. Urgent pls. Thanks

Thanks so much for the inquiry, I guess you are the same person that chatted with me this morning.

It will definitely be another massive looting spree, you can trust Tinubu for that.

I eat all of them, they are actually tastier than the meatier parts of chicken that are more popular.

He has obviously gone to recharge his failing batteries, staying back in France where he normally recharges would have been too obvious so he arranged to get it done in London.

There is no doubt that the Nigerian economy is in dire straits and in desperate need of reforms especially after eight years of cluelessness and retrogression under the immediate past administration whose extremely poor handling of the economy made it seem as if they were on a mission to completely obliterate the Nigerian economy.

Under the administration, our National debt moved from about N12 trillion in 2015 to about N77 trillion by the time Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief at the end of their maladministration last month. Not only was there very little
to show for the massive debt accumulated in terms of infrastructure and capital expenditure, most of the debts had gone into financing the excesses of an over bloated civil service and political class, private pockets and
funding unsustainable subsidies that were detrimental to the economy.

As a result of this extremely poor management of our economic resources, Nigeria found itself in a position in which over 97% of government revenues were being used to service unproductive debts while the country was
moving rapidly towards an economic crisis as the administration
didn’t care about the financial health of the country neither did they seem to
understand the grave implications of their fiscal irresponsibility on the economy of the country.

The reality is that they had plunged the country into a situation that the country was not only borrowing money to pay salaries, we were also borrowing
money to pay subsidies, repay other loans, pay for the limited capital
expenditure being executed and every other expenditure needed to run
government since virtually everything that the government was making was being used to service debts to prevent the country from being declared
insolvent which will trigger off an even worse economic crisis for the country.

It was thus a no brainer for any incoming administration to understand that the cost of governance must be brought down significantly while all efforts

are made to increase government revenue generation if the country is
to stay afloat.

In the last three weeks of the current administration (which incidentally is
still struggling for legitimacy), the government has made three major policy
decisions which are aimed at improving the finances of the federal government. The first being the fuel subsidy removal which will save the
federal government about N4.8 trillion per annum, the next being the
unification of the exchange rate of the Naira which means that at least N6
trillion in additional Naira revenue will accrue to the government per annum, and thirdly the removal of the subsidy on power supply the figures of which are more opaque than the other two mentioned above.

While the logic of these policy decisions cannot be faulted given the precarious state in which the previous APC administration had left the
economy, we have to understand that the ultimate aim of economic policies are to improve the welfare of the people and as such they must come with a human face. Effectively speaking, the policies should have been
implemented in such a way that the negative impact on the generality of the masses will be minimized.

Talking of policy decisions, a more responsible and people orientated
government would have looked inwards and the first thing that should have been done to address the economic problem would have been to cut down on the over bloated cost of running the government. An analytical
review of our 2023 budget reveals that government can easily save at least
N2 trillion by cutting down on the over bloated costs in the budget along with other unnecessary items that were padded into the budget.

Government can also increase revenue accruing to it through the Customs
and Federal Inland Revenues Services(FIRS) by at least N3 trillion by
blocking the leakages in the system that causes the government to lose trillions of Naira in revenue every year while also making efforts to stop crude oil theft through which the government loses billions of dollars every year. It is only when these house cleaning
exercises have been done that the government will have the moral authority to ask already impoverished Nigerians to sacrifice more through the removal of various subsidies as they have been quick to do.

With government having taken steps to cut down on expenditure while blocking leakages in the system, they must bear in mind that economic
reforms are about improving the welfare of the people and not just for
government to have more money to spend. As such, in my opinion the
subsidy removal should have come with at least 100% increment in
salaries of civil servants while the financial system is energized to provide
more credit to the productive sector of the economy to stimulate economic
activities and recalibrate the economy for growth in the private sector.

Sadly it is only the over fed political office holders that we are hearing that
their remuneration has been reviewed upwards by a whopping 114% while the people that really need the wage increase to survive are being ignored.

It is not enough for a government to implement economic policies that are supposedly right without considering the negative effect that it will have on the overwhelming majority of the people that it will impact and taking steps to mitigate against it. Our government must be made to understand that governance is firstly about the welfare of the people before their own
personal aggrandisement and a situation in which the masses are being made to bear the brunt of poorly implemented economic reforms while
political office holders are rewarded with undeserved huge salary increases is nothing short of economic rascality.

Kunle Oshobi

A development economist writes from Lagos

BleedingPen:
https://metrowatchxtra.com/2023/06/17/tinubu-ll-be-best-president-nigeria-ever-had-says-matawalle-metrowatch/

Some lunatics said the same thing about Buhari, he ended up being by far the worst president in the history of the country. That said, nothing good can come out of the presidency of a notoriously corrupt drug baron who is using a stolen mandate and failed woefully as governor of Lagos state.