The governor of Anambra, Chukwuma Soludo, says President Bola Tinubu did not cause Nigeria’s economic hardship.
He spoke on Wednesday during The Platform, a national conversation organised by Poju Oyemade, the senior pastor of the Covenant Christian Centre, to commemorate 2024 Democracy Day.
Governor Soludo said Nigeria is suffering from the accumulated mediocre actions and inactions of successive governments since 1999.
“President Tinubu did not cause the problem, it took more than 10 years of living in denial and kicking the can down the road to get to this predictable sorry state. We are now suffering the consequences of what I call delayed and misguided adjustments from a macroeconomic standpoint of the economy,” Soludo said.
The Anambra governor also said that President Tinubu has “the historic duty to mobilise Nigerians to clean up the mess for future generations”.
“Nigeria faces a fiscal quagmire and even technical solvency problems. Debt has piled up to a level that leaves little headroom for more borrowing, albeit at a very high cost,” he said.
“Yet, the needs of the citizens keep increasing in geometric proportion by the day.”
Soludo then warned that printing more money would culminate into spiralling inflation.
He implored Nigerians to support the president to change the country for good.
The governor also backed the proposed single term of six years for elected officeholders, noting that any kind of autonomy for LGAs in the country is against the principles of true federalism.
“Sometimes, these conversations about single term might begin to make some sense so that you fix it, whether you say four years or five years, six years or seven years, single term,” he said.
“So, you are not thinking about the next election once you finish getting into this.
“I face that all day in my state. You want to get into this project; they say, ‘no, wait, you know you have an election’.
“And I say, ‘no, let’s get it; if we get there, we get there, and if we lose, we lose.”