Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose has questioned the rationale
behind the Federal Government’s hiring of consultants from Malaysia
with the sum of N458 million to help Nigeria build her economic
capacity, saying; “the federal government’s action is a clear vote of
no confidence on President Muhammadu Buhari’s government and economic
experts in the country.”
The governor, who said; “it is shameful that Nigeria, which produced
the likes of African Development Bank (ADB) President, Dr Akinwumi
Adesina; Treasurer and Vice President of the World Bank, Mrs Aruma
Otteh; Independent Non-Executive Director of Standard Chartered Plc,
United Kingdom, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Professor of Political
Economy, Pat Utomi; among others is now paying people from Malaysia to
revive its economy.”
In a statement issued on Sunday, and signed by Special Assistant to
the governor on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka,
Governor Fayose said “out-sourcing consultancy for the conduct of
study that would aid the implementation of the National Economic
Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) is tantamount to telling Nigerians
that they all lack capacity to govern their own country.”
He asked; “How can you hire foreign consultants that would work for 13
weeks to conduct a study on how to revive the economy of a country
like Nigeria and pay the consultant N458 million?”
Governor Fayose said he had said it several times that the APC
government of Buhari lacked clue as to how to solve our country’s
economic problems, adding that; “Now they have just confirmed that
truly, they are clueless.”
He said; “By hiring economic experts from Malaysia, President Buhari
and his men have confirmed that they have no capacity to govern this
country.
“It was the cluelessness of the Buhari’s government that made the
exchange rate that was N197 to $1 as at May 29, 2015 rise to as much
as N500 to $1 before it came down to about N370 to $1. Today, official
rate is N305 to $1.
“It was this same cluelessness that made one bag of rice that was
N7,000 as at the time Buhari took office to rice to as much as N22,000
and made more than 25 states to be unable to pay workers salary
regularly owing to dwindled revenue from the federation account.
“According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), an agency of
the federal government, the number of unemployed Nigerians rose from
7.51 million at the beginning of October 2015 to 11.19 million at the
end of September 2016! This was caused by Buhari’s government
cluelessness.
“Like I have said before, President Buhari and his men do not know
what to do. It is therefore left for Nigerians use their votes to show
Buhari and his APC the way out of the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in
2019.”