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| Mr. Femi Falana |
Human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana
(SAN); economist, Dr. Henry Boyo, and other social commentators have
cautioned President Muhammadu Buhari against seeking financial
assistance and recommendations from the G7, the IMF and the World Bank.
They gave the warning during a civil
society roundtable on the state of the nation organised by the Nigeria
United for Democracy in Lagos on Wednesday.
They said the President should rather generate income by reducing government expenditure and fighting corruption.
Buhari had, on June 7, attended the G7 summit in Germany where he presented a wish list.
However, Falana said, “Our President
went to the G7 and we are happy. And he went there with a bowl, ‘please
do this for us, do this for us,’ we must interrogate that, has our
situation become so bad that we have to ask for external support when we
have not mobilised the energy, the potential of our people to turn this
country around?
“And
please, let the new regime be told that the dangerous prescriptions of
the IMF and the World Bank and the G7 that we have followed since 1986
like the Structural Adjustment Programme, which was imposed on Nigeria,
have reduced Nigeria to a banana republic.
“Since then we have been managing
poverty, what they call poverty alleviation, not poverty eradication,
because this system can never abolish poverty.”
Falana urged Buhari not to listen to
external forces that were known for bringing Africa to its knees through
self-serving economic politics.
In his remarks, Boyo said the IMF’s
prescriptions had devalued the naira and made life unbearable for
Nigerians, adding that Buhari should work at stabilising the country’s
faltering monetary policies.
He urged the President not to remove petroleum subsidy.
He said, “We are running an economy that
promotes poverty. It is either about privatisation, downsizing of
workers, so that all manners of goods are brought to destroy the
country’s industrial potential.”
He noted that Nigeria needs more local
refineries that would bring about a reduced price of petrol to around
N67 without subsidy as long as the naira appreciates against the dollar
by 50 per cent from the current exchange rate
Also speaking, a former President of the
Nigerian Bar Association, Ikeja branch, Mr. Monday Ubani, said the
President Goodluck Jonathan administration failed woefully in the fight
against corruption.
He, therefore, called on Buhari to strengthen the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and other anti-graft agencies.
He said, “There is corruption in the
public sector and the private sector. In the public sector we have the
corruption of the political elites or the political class which is very
pervasive, destructive and harmful.”
“We have the corruption of the civil
service, which more deadly and possesses the potency of mass destruction
of anything both living and non-living.”
Source: Punchng
