Economic hardship: Atiku challenges Tinubu and offers a counterproposal

Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) nominee for president in the most recent general election, claimed on Sunday that President Bola Tinubu has not presented any specific policy measures his administration is implementing to address the severe economic problems and poverty engulfing the nation.

Additionally, Atiku asserted that the Tinubu administration’s misguided policies have continued to inflict immense suffering and hardship on the economy.

In a message published on his X Twitter on Sunday, Atiku said that if the government is willing to listen to wise advice and stop internal bleeding brought on by corruption and poorly handled foreign loans, the Nigerian economy will start to recover.

He said that Tinubu’s new FX management policy was hastily assembled without adequate planning or stakeholder participation, and that the government downplayed the actual and potential negative effects of its actions.

Atiku went on to accuse Tinubu of denying the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) the autonomy to create and carry out a sensible foreign exchange management policy.

He proposed that this would have addressed concerns like rate convergence, FX backlogs, demand curtailment/regulation, and increased liquidity.

The former vice president stated that he and other Nigerians could not remain silent in the face of the current circumstances, contending that the administration had shown itself to be sufficiently lacking in vision to turn things around.

“If the government will not hold on to their usual hubris, there are ways that the country can walk out of the current crisis,” Atiku remarked when asked about potential solutions to the current economic crisis.

He went on, “It would be overkill to adopt a floating exchange rate system given Nigeria’s underlying economic conditions.” We would have urged the Nigerian Central Bank to handle foreign exchange by taking a gradualist approach. The better choice would have been a managed-floating system. To put it simply, under such a system, the value of the Naira may vary on a daily basis, but the CBN will intervene to regulate and stabilize it. Such regulation will be applied sensibly and carefully, particularly in relation to curtailing speculative activities.