As Nigeria braces itself with the reality of an economic recession, President Muhammad Buhari has said that the elite are also to be blamed. Their crime being not alerting the Federal Government on what would happen should crude oil prices fall.
The President made the disclosure in an interview with Guardian News two days prior to Democracy Day.
Guardian correspondents had asked the President
Are we really close to an economic recession and in what ways can all your foreign trips and the foreign investments you are anticipating mitigate this looming recession and what would you do with the loot recovered?
PMB replied:
With what happened to us so far and what I mentioned to you, I wouldn’t doubt a recession. I have just told you that from 1999 to 2014, Nigeria’s crude was selling on the average of $100 per barrel. These are facts you can cross check. The average production was about two million barrels per day. If you take about half a million for consumption at home, about 445,000 per day, which was what was officially budgeted for local refineries, only to be complemented by marketers. But suddenly when the oil price plummeted, we looked left, right and centre, and found out that no arrangement was made to support the economy if such a thing happened. So really, it is frightening. I agree with you that the prospect of going into recession is frightening and I believe that the leadership of this country should bear the consequence for not meeting up, I blame the elite for not alerting the other government sufficiently for us to realise that if anything happens to oil, we would be in trouble. What is my solution? It is to advise the Nigerian elite to please for once be patriotic. Let them work very hard to support this country. Not only politicians, but for the leadership at every level to take responsibility to