Renowned economist, Bismarck Rewane has said that the number of mentally unstable people has increased on the streets of Lagos and Nigeria as a whole due to the economic policies of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and President Bola Tinubu respectively.
According to him, the economic policies have occasioned poverty and hardship leading to widespread frustration that causes “some of them (to) walk across the road even in moving traffic.”
Speaking as a guest on Channels TV on Thursday, Rewane said, “You will notice that on the streets of Lagos in particular, the number of lunatics has increased and part of it is driven by poverty. Many mental health issues. People are pushed to the wall. Some of them walk across the road even in moving traffic.”
The Managing Director of Financial Derivatives Company Limited earlier said that most Nigerians have no interest in the huge figures being bandied in the 2024 budget proposal if it has no direct bearing on their lives.
“In the end, budgetary arithmetics, budgetary mathematics in economics is of no use to anybody except when by this time, six months’ time, if we are buying rice at N40,000 a bag rather than N60,000 a bag, if we are buying bread N900 a big loaf instead of N1,300 which we are doing today. If we are buying garri at lower prices.
“The people are not interested in whether the budget is balanced and what the debt is. How does it (the budget) affect their day-to-day livelihood? That is the key thing,” Rewane said.