Former presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, Adewole Adebayo has highlighted three areas where President Bola Tinubu has made progress in managing Nigeria’s economy.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday, Adebayo said: “It’s obvious that the economy that President Buhari left was a poorly managed economy, and was an emergency room patient. Like any emergency room patient, the road to recovery will be a good diagnosis by the doctor. So if the doctor is able to know what is the reason why you are ill, he will be able to put you on a solid path to recovery.
“What President Tinubu has done is to stabilise the patient, but I’m not sure that he has managed to know the ailment. So the patient is not going to die imminently, but he hasn’t found a cure. He hasn’t been able to identify the problem, the ailment that is disturbing the patient, but as an emergency room doctor he is taking some steps, some of it actually aggravated the case of the patient, but over time, he appears to have one or two wins in two sectors, which is why it appears that they might be deceived into thinking that the patient is on his road to recovery.”
Continuing, he said: “One, he has managed to get more revenue. At least in nominal terms, domestic borrowing that was the feature of President Tinubu’s public finance has reduced. So he’s managed to get some revenue. Of course, because of other wrong headed policies, that money he’s gotten, in real terms, will not be able to finance a lot of the government spending and infrastructure. However, in terms of balance sheet, Tinubu has managed to have a better balance sheet than Buhari left him.
“The second thing that helped them, which we will know in the long run whether it’s really a good thing to do, was that they rebased inflation. So they started counting inflation differently. So if they say inflation has dropped to about 20 point something per cent now from 21 point something per cent last month, it’s not because the economy is performing better, but because the country has changed, and whether the accounting is more reflective of the reality. Let us see what happens by the first quarter of next year, when they are implementing their budget. Remember that the 2025 budget doesn’t appear to have come on stream yet, so we won’t be able to know how that works in terms of macroeconomics.
“Then the third thing that has worked for them is the relative fall in food inflation. So, food inflation has dropped, and food inflation is a major component of the inflation basket. Since the prices of food stuff has come down a bit, not that those who are at home are going to feel it, because it hasn’t dropped to the level where they can feel it, but it has dropped in the numbers. It’s like someone who’s trying to catch a bag of rice that is placed 10 feet above your car, your hand cannot reach it, but if you drop it to eight feet, your hand still cannot reach it, but it’s lower than before. That’s how it is. In a way, the economy is not, in terms of these numbers, worse now than they were last year, slightly better, but far away from where it ought to be.”
