According to Peter Obi’s assessment of the President Bola Tinubu administration, he hails President Tinubu for keeping his campaign promise of building on the legacies of the immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari.
While assessing President Tinubu’s administration after one year in office, Obi with a tone of unhidden sarcasm said that Tinubu has pushed Nigeria on the negative indices from where Buhari stopped.
Apparently, Obi spoke in an interview. It was the first public review of the Tinubu administration during which the 2023 presidential candidate of Labour Party also responded to questions on the crisis in Labour Party, the recent defection of his former campaign manager, Dr Doyin Okupe to the Tinubu camp among others.
On his assessment of the Tinubu administration, Obi said: “I will say that President Tinubu has kept to his election promise”.
Throughout his campaign, he consistently maintained that he would continue from where Buhari stopped and he has done very well. I will give him excellent (on that). I will give him pass mark and it is very simple
“Dollar was 460 and it is now 1,500. Fuel was 238 and it is now about 700. Diesel was about 844 and it is now 1,415. A bag of rice that was 30,000 or 35,000 is now about 80,000.
“A bag of beans that was similarly 30 or 35,000 is now about 90,000. Garri was 20-28,000 is now 49-50,000.
“A tuber of yam that was about 2,000 is now about 10,000. Tomato basket is about 150,000. A kilo of electricity that was about 66 is now 200.
“You can go on and on even bread which is a basic thing that other countries subsidise like Egypt, small medium bread was about N400 to N450 is now N900 and the big one is now N1,500.
Obi added that the new administration has also ballooned the national debt.
“This year alone through Central Bank of Nigeria (it) has issued and taken from the system over N16 trillion, you can imagine the interest at almost 20% is about N3 trillion over 12 months. Last year we paid about N5.7 trillion servicing interests on debts.”
The assessment by Obi of the Tinubu government also touched on the fall of the country’s GDP which he said has taken Nigeria from the biggest economy in the continent to the fourth.
“By the time he took over last year we were still the biggest economy in Africa with $477b as our GDP followed by South Africa, Egypt Algeria and Morocco. Today, we are number four and South Africa number one and I think about $373b, Egypt is second with $347b followed by Algeria, $266 and we are now $252b GDP economy.
The assessment on per capita basis was even worse after the first year of the Tinubu administration as Obi said:
“It is even worse when you go to the per capita. We are actually one quarter of the per capita of the least of these countries I have mentioned. South Africa is about $6,000 per capita, Egypt is $4,000 per capita, so is Algeria and then Morocco which is $4,200 per capita and we are $1,000 plus.”
“So, we have gone low, coming from a per capita of $3,000 plus in 2014. Corruption, insecurity have worsened,” Obi said.
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