The Director General
of the West African Institute of Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM),
Prof. Akpan Ekpo, has warned the current administration of
Muhammadu Buhari not
to allow the economic situation deteriorate to the level of Zimbabwe.
In an interview with
TheCable in Washington, Ekpo, pointed out that even late Sani Abacha, a
military dictator, allowed experts to run the economy while he was head of
state.
Lamenting the
current situation where non-professionals are in charge of key ministries, Ekpo
said the government of President Muhammadu Buhari needs the assistance of a
strong economic management team.
“If you look at
Nigeria’s economic history in the last 56 years, there are some episodes where
you could say they appointed technocrats to manage the economy,” he said.
“But since 1999,
there have been problem because politics dominated the economy.
“The military, for
some reasons were able to recruit some technocrats. I can tell you that
everything about the Nigerian economy has been researched, documented and
written about, before 1999. They are on shelves.
“But from 1999, in
fairness to former president Olusegun Obasanjo, he tried in putting together
experts to macro-manage the economy. He brought people who were good. Then, he
had an economic team that constituted mainly of experts.
“Those experts
co-opted other experts to look at the economy. I think it continued up to the
time of the late president Yar’Adua. During Yar’Adua’s tenure, I was a member
of the team.”
Ekpo, who was a vice
chancellor at the University of Uyo, criticised the current foreign exchange
policy of the CBN, saying it encourages round-tripping.
“You can see
that the misalignment between the
interbank and parallel market rates is too much. When I last check, government
was still the greatest supplier of foreign exchange, and they give it to the
banks to sell.
“Any bank official
would be rational and want to round trip. So, the gap is just too much. And
that is going to affect foreign direct investments. What you will have is hot
money.
“So, when there is a
recession, you adopt what is called economic nationalism. So, let’s pray that
the economic recession does not continue for a long time, because if that
happens and we enter into a depression, we may just be like Zimbabwe or
Venezuela.”“So, Abacha approved for him a ministerial advisory committee. He
brought in only economics and a lawyer to drive the process during that
process. Go and look at the macro-fundamentals at that period. And there was a
link between the ministerial advisory committee and the national economic team
headed by Prof. Sam Aluko.
While acknowledging
that Abacha was a dictator, Ekpo said he left the economy to be ran by experts
hence he did very well economically. “I was involved. In fact, I was the
chairman of that ministerial committee in the ministry of finance for four
years. We ran the economy.”
SUNNEWS
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