Erudite
scholar, economist and former henchman of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN,
prof. Charles Soludo has ones again blamed the federal government for the
current economic woes in the country saying it was self-inflicted.
Prof.
Soludo, while delivering a keynote address at the Delta State Economic &
Investment Summit in Asaba, the state capital hinted that the prevailing
recesssion that has placed the nation's economy on a free fall was avoidable if
the federal government had assembled a strong economic team and looked beyond
Oil as source of revenue.
Prof.
Soludo described the country as a nation at war with itself given the almost
endless insecurity and agitation challenges that has continued unabated to
hinder prospective investors from coming to invest in Nigeria. According to
him, nowhere in the world can you have a competitive economy in an atmosphere
of chaos. Terrorism, kidnapping, destruction of Oil facilities and other social
vices can only retard a country's economy and place it on a free fall as we
presently have today, he said.
The former CBN boss, however, said though we cannot deny the
reality that there's a depression in the level of price of services and commodities
due to Oil price collapse, we must face the challenges head-on and see it as an
opportunity to urgently diversify our economy. This he said can only be done by
going back to the Agro-industrial era when Oil wasn't the in-thing.
In his words " We must move to the post-oil economy NOW if
we must swim out of this pool of economic doldrum because in the next 25 years,
this Oil that has turned into a curse to us as a nation will not be the
in-thing to determine our GDP, income per head, price level index nor cost of
living and the earlier we device other means of generating revenues for
ourselves outside Oil and gas, the better it will be for us as a people ".
He lamented that unfortunately, as it stands now, the depressed level of price
of commodities will be with us for a period of time.
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