A development and economic expert, Chiwuike Uba, has urged the Federal Government to decisively tackle widespread insecurity and all-involving oil theft in 2023.
Uba, who is the Board Chairman of Amaka Chiwuike-Uba Foundation (ACUF), in an issued statement yesterday, said that the two major challenges had made a mess of 2022 financial earnings as well as flow of the entire country.
Uba noted that these ugly trends had devastated both macro- and micro-levels of the economy; thus, inflicting financial pain on governments, corporate entities and individual Nigerians.
Uba, who is the lead researcher of Afri-Heritage, an economic-political research and analytical institute, said: For the most part, Nigerias economy did not do well in 2022. It is therefore urgent to put in place a policy and interventions to reverse the economic collapse and avoid the continuation of the ugly past in 2023. In particular, between Q1 of 2022 and Q3 of 2022, agricultural and services growth rates declined by 58 percent and 6 percent respectively. Overall, the non-oil growth rate decreased by 30 percent, and the oil growth rate by 13 percent.
How can the economy be okay, with over 133 million Nigerians into multi-dimensional poverty, which is nothing; but abject poverty and a misery index of 62.79 points in July 2022? He said that the continued use of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) ways-and-means, external and domestic borrowing to finance the budget deficit, had created more economic challenges.
The economist noted that unless this trend was reversed, Nigerias economic difficulties would worsen in 2023. According to him, evidence shows that the increase in ways-and-means has contributed to around 40 percent of the money supply, which in turn contributed 7.60 percent to inflation.
The economist, however, congratulated President Muhammadu Buhari on some of the successes in 2022, adding that the completion of the second Niger Bridge, the Abuja-Kano rail-line and Lagos-Ibadan expressways is highly commendable.
Uba said that the recovery of more than US$322 million and the determination of the enforcement of the arbitrary award of $10 billion to P&ID strengthened the governments position in the fight against corruption.
