Sola POPOOLA
A Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress(APC),congressman Bimbo Daramola has said that the revelations by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) with regards to how the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) ,Godwin Emefiele run the apex bank is scary.
Featuring on Channels’ Television Personality Live Interview programme “Politics Today “,Daramola disclosed that the damning report showed how Emefiele’ s anti-people’s policies literarily shutdown the Nigerian economy .
With the extent of the rots in the system ,Daramola said it would take a bold and courageous leader like President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to turn things around and return the economy to the path of prosperity.
The former member of the National Assembly said “do you honestly think it will be fair to expect that this economy will not respond to that shock? It wasn’t even a shock at some point, it had become the manifest reality of that administration
He said :”the Nigerian economy was getting all the bashing from all sides, the economy practically hemorrhaged, we were bleeding from everywhere, and I saw that report yesterday and I was asking myself, how could Asiwaju have been able to turn things around in one month or in one year, it’s impossible”
” Don’t forget that this economy has largely been described as one that is import dependent and that is not good in itself but we didn’t get here today, and so if you’re going to turn back the hands of the clock, you have to consistently work on all of the indicators that has brought us here.
Commenting on the fluctuating exchange rates, the APC chieftain explained that ” the dollar rate and the way it is spiralling down today will also have consequential effect in another seven, eight months, particularly for guys who will like to…
“For instance, and I’ll give you an example, have you seen the report of the EFCC with regards to what the helmsman at the time did with the Central Bank of Nigeria?
“So, what I will say is that we also need everything to rest on, what are we doing right today? We will continue on that trajectory, whatever wrong had been done, we need to wind back and now get to the point where we say, how do we springboard into the future to catch-up.
“There are a number of things that the fiscal side, the monetary side, and all of those things that we may not have time to fully exhaust. This is one topic, or it should be a program, a one hour program on its own. But it is good that you have also spotlighted it cause it makes a lot of sense because Nigerians are hungry and we can’t be talking about elections, politics, politicians everytime. We must also situate everything we do in the context of how does this affect an ordinary Nigerian and I’m happy that you started with economy.”
On why the reduction in the foreign exchange rates is yet to have impact on the market forces ,Daramola said such could be attributed to greed and unwholesome activities of some internal saboteurs .
“Nigerians by our construct sometimes we could be very unscrupulous and we must admit that. People have stocked goods even before now are saying themselves that we didn’t just buy those products today.”
“Alright, let me give you an example, this is jocularly, this may be a little bit on the funny side, but this eas eha happened to me today.
“A friend of mine who had for all of the time, been complaining about how the dollar to naira went all the way to an all time high of N1,900, and then, all of a sudden today somebody gave him a 100 dollar bill and he went to zone 4 to change it and it turned out that dollar had come to N1,050 and he got angry.
“The same guy who was angry and livid because dollar went to an all time high of N1,900, got angry that dollar had come down to N1,050.” Daramola said .