Prominent All Progressives Congress (APC) member Eze Chukwuemeka Eze has expressed his dissatisfaction with the explanations and diversion the presidency has provided on Nigeria’s increasing economic difficulties in a biting assessment of the current administration.
Eze’s comments underscore a mounting apprehension regarding the path that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration is taking the nation’s economy.
He charged that in order to save the country from its current situation, President Tinubu and his government were stuck in a difficult situation with no obvious way out.
He emphasized that the Naira’s value is falling against other major currencies, causing the Nigerian economy to spiral downward and towards an economic abyss.
The staunch supporter of the APC saw firsthand the disastrous effects of the currency’s decline, such as the sharp rise in food and other basic commodity costs that left the public severely undernourished and hungry.
Eze bemoaned the obvious hopelessness on the faces of Nigerians, a large number of whom cannot afford to eat even one meal a day.
Nigeria has been dubbed the “poverty capital of the world” due to its dire economic circumstances, but Eze was perplexed by some analysts’ support for Tinubu’s plans.
He contended that there is a substantial gap between the government’s goals and the results, even in cases when the policies were theoretically sound because they failed to take into account the intricate dynamics involved in their execution.
Eze also addressed Vice President Kashim Shettima’s recent claim that politicians upset with the outcome of the 2023 election were preparing a coup against Nigeria.
Eze argued that Tinubu’s administration had demonstrated no sincere commitment to tackling the nation’s problems, preferring to concentrate on maintaining the president’s prestige, dismissing Shettima’s accusations as unimportant.
He said, “The pernicious effects of perpetual poverty have become real under his administration and these are his chief legacies.
“There seems to be no efforts by the present administration in tackling the economic concerns of the country and if there are, he said, it means such efforts are not good enough and shifting blame to patriots who are in their private capacities thinking out ways to help the country is to say the least myopic.
“I laugh at the reasons expounded by some of our leaders and Scholars as the factors behind our present food Crisis. They failed to highlight insecurity as the main bane of the present economic woes facing Nigeria.
“Where do we get the food to eat when most of the farmers both in the North and Southern sections of this country particularly those in the North Central are now in the IDP Camps leaving their farms in the hands of herders?
“And we are busy fooling ourselves that we don’t have enough food to feed the populace. What part of Nigeria is safe or secure for normal farming activities to take place?
“This is the reality. Our problem is human-induced yet we are expecting God to send us manna from Heaven as he did to the people of Israel who had no means of farming at the period God sent manna to them.”
Eze highlighted that apart from insecurity, another major cause of Nigeria’s present woes was the inability of the President who in 2012 highlighted the consequences of the removal of subsidy but was carried away by his election victory and announced without a proper study and provision to ameliorate the suffering of Nigerians, the removal of oil subsidy.
