Anambra State Governor, Charles Soludo, has said that President Bola Tinubu’s administration inherited an economically challenged situation, describing it as a “dead economy” passed down by its predecessors.
Soludo made this observation during an interview on Channels TV’s Politics Today on Thursday, where he discussed and analyzed the decline of the naira under the new government led by Tinubu.
The former Central Bank of Nigeria chief blamed worsening indicators on past violations of the apex bank’s establishment law, which bars deficit financing above five percent of prior year revenues.
Soludo accused the past management of the Central Bank of Nigeria of unlawfully providing trillions in unsupported financing, breaching legal constraints, and exacerbating current challenges.
He argued that, from a macroeconomic perspective, the Tinubu regime inherited an economy that was already deemed irreparable before assuming office.
He said, “We explicitly put into the law that you can’t grant the Federal Government more than five percent of the previous year’s actual revenue. And that so granted must be retired by the end of the year in which it was granted. And when the Federal Government fails to retire, the Central Bank is forbidden by that law from further advancing ways and means. That was the law 2007 Act of the Central Bank.
“But we sat all of us Nigerians watching the CBN illegally and brazenly violating that Act year on year and kept on printing money. That is when advance money is backed by nothing; you just credit the Federal Government with trillions N 4 trillion, N10 trillion, N15 trillion and we keep going.
“I said it before. This particular government inherited a dead economy from a microeconomic point of view, this government inherited a dead horse that was seen standing but people didn’t know that it was dead. I think it’s important for Nigerians to understand this.”
Earlier this month, during negotiations for an infrastructure loan in Saudi Arabia, Tinubu acknowledged that his administration inherited significant fiscal and infrastructure deficits.
Kanyi Daily recalls that Anambra State Charles Soludo had rubbished the purported investments made by his predecessor in office, Peter Obi, who is now the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP).