Former Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Professor Charles Soludo, has again delivered a treatise on the performance of Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
Soludo, in article written in response to Okonjo-Iweala’s reaction to his earlier article rubbishing some claims on economic performance by The minister-led economic team, literally dismissed Okonjo-Iweala as being out of tune with the modern economic realities having been cocooned in the turgid ideas of Bretton Woods institutions for decades.
The Former CBN governor went further to dismiss the minister’s claim to credit for the debt reprief achieved by President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration.
For him,MThe true credit goes to Obasanjo himself who whetted the ground for the eventual repreif through co-ordinated diplomacy.
Soludo, who had earlier alleged that the economy of the country is in a terrible state, chided the minister, saying she “needs serious help.”
The minister, in a response circulated by Paul Nwabuikwu, her special adviser on media, described Soludo as the worst CBN governor in the history of the country, adding that “Soludo is an embittered loser in the Nigerian political space and he is so derailed to commit intellectual harakiri by deliberately misquoting economic facts and maliciously turning statistics on their head to justify a hatchet job.”
In a lengthy piece written on Sunday, however, Soludo maintained that he was standing by his words, lamenting that the government had proven itself to be intolerant of criticisms.
“As a concerned Nigerian, I have a duty to speak out again. Regrettably, you have taken it very personal,” he said.
“I am not bothered about the personal abuses: I actually expected worse. What name has the government not called President (Olusegun) Obasanjo or any person who has dared to disagree with it of late? Anyone who disagrees with the government must either be ‘insane’ or have a ‘character’ deficiency or must be ‘looking for a job’ or ‘without honour’, or a ‘charlatan’.
“Yesterday, Sanusi alleged that $20 billion was missing and he was accused of gross financial mismanagement, recklessness and poor governance to the point of being the first CBN governor to be suspended from office.
“Today, he is the good one; and for daring to award an “F” grade for our economic performance, Soludo has become the ‘worst’ and ‘without character’ or perhaps ‘looking for position’.
“In my view, there are three criteria for evaluating a public officer’s stewardship: the evaluation by his employer; the satisfaction of the public he served; and the hard facts of performance.
“As I will show on these three counts, I am convinced that I left a world record of public service and a thousand Okonjo-Iwealas cannot re-write that history.
“In Nigeria’s history, no CBN governor has delivered 24 consecutive months of single digit inflation as I did until the advent of the unprecedented global crisis in 2008,” he added.
Lashing at Okonjo-Iweala, Soludo described the current administration as insensitive to the plight of Nigerians.
“Part of my frustration is that five years after, everything I warned about has come to happen and we are conducting our campaigns as if we are not in crisis,” he said.
(Read the full article in The Rainbow ‘Opinion’ column)
