The Federal Government has been enjoined to rise to its responsibilities and rescue Nigeria’s economy from imminent collapse.
The call came on the heels of the nation’s dwindling economy, even as the naira continues to fall against the United States dollar.
Recall that Nigerians have been witnessing a continuous increase in the prices of goods and services, including fuel, transport fares, food items and utility bills.
A Professor of Economics at the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Tella Sheriffdeen urged the Federal Government to concentrate more on strengthening the naira in order to protect Nigerians from further hardship.
He said, “We have to start thinking on how to manage the naira from falling further which means that we should concentrate on importing essential things.
“We have to appeal to politicians to stop spending dollars but naira instead. For example, the Governor of River State said he was going to give the footballers $20,000, are we spending dollars in Nigeria? Is it not naira (that should be spent?. Such spending also creates their own problems in the economy.
“I think we are creating more problems for ourselves than we should. When the country is in this nature, what the government should do is to quickly assemble some economists that will proffer solutions for a better way forward, but I don’t think they are doing that. They think they can solve the problems on their own. Unfortunately, they cannot.
“They should get information on how we can get out of this mess. This has been internationalised; so, there is a need for everybody to come together to solve the problem.
“We are having this problem of employment and poverty and this has taken the centre of the economy. People tend to spend all the money without production, it becomes a problem.”
In the same vein, an economic expert, Johnson Chukwu, who said the government was aware of the imminent crisis but was adamant to the warnings of stakeholders in the country, called on the Buhari-led regime to tackle the current economic crisis with the best hands.
He said, “The President needs to assemble an expert economic team to save the country from crashing. We have waited and we saw this coming. Some of us cried out in several reports on how the government is running the economy.
“We said if you keep on borrowing and your revenue is not growing, you will definitely be faced with such a situation where we are today. Nothing happens by accident. We don’t have time. This is not the time for talking but for action.
“It’s like saying a plane is about to crash and you bring together experts to talk, no, it can’t take us anywhere. The President needs to assemble sound and well tested economic experts to save this country from the economic crisis before us.
“The President should constitute a team, empower them, and implement their recommendations. As a nation, we should be talking about a strong economy at this time and not the situation we are now. It’s unfortunate where we found ourselves.”
Meanwhile, a Professor of Business Administration of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Sulaiman Karwai, advised the Federal Government as a matter of urgency to cut down on the cost of governance.
“The economy is biting harder now. We are a foreign-dependent country, we import virtually everything. As long as we don’t bring the dollars down, nothing will work. The dollar is crazy now.
“Also, the government must end banditry, the North is the food basket of this country and because of these issues, the farmers are running away from the farm. If the harvest this year becomes bad, then that’s another big problem. And like you know, food security is very important because the first thing for everyone is what to eat.
“Salary of workers also needs to be reviewed to reduce poverty. What your salary could buy in 2016, it cannot buy even one-tenth of it now.
“The next is that the government needs to review itself and reduce the cost of governance. There is a need to reduce the salary of all members of the Senate, governors,” he added.
