…Incompetent leaders paid salaries arrears, invested massively in infrastructure — Tinubu’s Aide

Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Kingsley Moghalu on Wednesday has blamed the economic misfortunes of the country on the current and successive governments.

The former CBN Deputy Governor said Nigeria fell under completely incompetent economic management and has not recovered since 2014.

Moghalu in a statement on his X (formerly Twitter) handle told President Bola Tinubu’s administration that palliatives will never reverse poverty.

According to him, “The immediate future looks difficult,” insisting that “throwing money that is not creating wealth will not solve the nation’s problems.”

He suggested that the country needs to lay a real foundation for longer-term economic transformation.

He said, “Nigeria’s economic distress is simply part of a 40-year downward trajectory that was broken only briefly by the Obasanjo civilian presidency and to some degree under Yar’Adua/Jonathan (up to mid-2014). Ever since, especially in 2015, we have fallen under completely incompetent economic management and have not recovered.

“The immediate future looks difficult. One wishes one could see what will create fundamental change, but alas! Throwing money that is not creating wealth will not solve our problems. It only makes them worse. We need to lay a real foundation for longer-term economic transformation. That 80 percent of Nigeria’s exports in 2023 was oil tells you we have yet to get serious. ‘Palliatives’ (just google the dictionary definition of the word) will never reverse poverty.

“Wealth is positively created. You cannot redistribute it when you haven’t created it. You are simply recycling poverty. If we invest HEAVILY in achieving 20,000 megawatts of electricity and free education based on a 70 percent science and technology/TVET-based curriculum over the next 4-5 years and drastically cut the cost of governance, the true foundation for our future prosperity would have been laid. It can be done. But the patterns of thought of our political class are a real obstacle. Real economic thinking is NOT happening, so economic transformation can’t follow.

“Like it or not, individuals in certain positions matter. Sanusi and Ngozi Okonjo Iweala made a huge difference in their roles. That’s because they had CAPACITY. Their appointments went above the politics of cronyism. The results, which is what matters more than sound and fury at the end of the day, followed.

“It was an empowering and enabling experience and environment to have worked with both of them in economic thinking and policy formulation. We kept the politicians at the gates. When the Agbada people took over completely and competent technocracy was treated with scorn ever since and up till today, it’s been a sad story. May we recover one day. Like it or not, appointments have real consequences.”

Reacting, the Senior Special Assistant to President Tinubu on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi via his official X (formerly Twitter) handle said, “I continue to find it quite amusing how @MoghaluKingsley and others like him have managed to convince themselves that their period in government was the ‘golden era of competence’ in the management of the economy of Nigeria.

“Granted that the OBJ era 1999-2007 birthed some reforms that opened up the economy but it was a period that Nigeria didn’t see any progress in infrastructural development that has direct bearing on the quality of life.

“That period till 2015 was a period of trillions of unpaid salary and pension arrears. A period when contractors were owed hundreds of billions with thousands of abandoned and uncompleted projects.

“We should never forget Professor Moghalu was a Deputy Governor at the Central Bank during this period when his boss, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi said $20billion in oil revenue could not be accounted for. He was Deputy Governor at CBN when hundreds of millions of dollars were looted under various guises yet Moghalu wants us to believe that that period was the gold standard in economic management in Nigeria.

“In his series of tweets today, Moghalu stated that Nigeria is being run by ‘incompetent leadership’ since 2015 whereas the so-called ‘incompetent leadership’ of APC paid off salary and pension debts left behind by Moghalu’s band of ‘competent’ leaders. Nigeria has seen massive investments in critical economic infrastructure – roads, ports, power, airports, irrigation dams, rail, military/security hardwares  –  never seen in the last 40years made possible by supposed ‘incompetent’ leaders. Under the ‘incompetent leadership’ of APC, the government embarked on reconstruction of 13,000 kilometres of roads across the country out of 33,000 kilometres of Federal roads in 8 years of President Buhari.

“It should be said too that every indices of measuring economic growth significantly declined from 2010- May 2015, a period when Moghalu was Deputy Governor at CBN. By the time the Jonathan administration handed over to Buhari on May 29, 2015 the GDP had declined from 7 percent growth rate to 2 percent and Nigeria was already primed for recession which eventually happened with the collapse of crude oil price.

“Nigeria’s foreign reserve dropped from the height of $60billion to $29billion when Moghalu was part of the ‘competent leaders’ in government and Excess Crude Account dropped from $20billion to $2billion at the time crude oil sold for $100 per barrel for straight 4years from 2011-2014.

“The period between 2010-2014 was when Nigeria made the most money from crude oil in history yet nothing to show for it. Dear Professor Moghalu, not all of us are suffering from dementia Sir

“Truth is people like Professor Moghalu should stop fouling the atmosphere with their holier-than-thou remonstrations,” he said