Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State has asserted that President Bola Tinubu’s administration inherited a “moribund economy”left behind by its predecessors.
Soludo made this declaration while analyzing the depreciation of the naira under the new government during an interview on Channels TV’s Politics Today on Thursday.
The former Central Bank of Nigeria chief attributed the deteriorating indicators to past violations of the apex bank’s establishment law, which prohibits deficit financing beyond five percent of prior year revenues.
He accused previous CBN management of illegally granting trillions in unbacked financing despite legal restrictions, contributing to present predicaments. From a macroeconomic perspective, Soludo argued that the Tinubu administration took over an already irreparable economy before assuming office.
He said, “We explicitly put into the law that you can’t grant the Federal Government more than five per cent of the previous year’s actual revenue. And that so granted must be retired by the end of the year in which it was granted. And when the Federal Government fails to retire, the Central Bank is forbidden by that law from further advancing ways and means. That was the law 2007 Act of the Central Bank.
“But we sat all of us Nigerians watching the CBN illegally and brazenly violating that Act year on year and kept on printing money. That is when advance money is backed by nothing; you just credit the Federal Government with trillions N 4 trillion, N10 trillion, N15 trillion and we keep going.
“I said it before. This particular government inherited a dead economy from a microeconomic point of view, this government inherited a dead horse that was seen standing but people didn’t know that it was dead. I think it’s important for Nigerians to understand this.”
Earlier this month, Tinubu while negotiating an infrastructure loan in Saudi Arabia had also stated his administration took over substantial fiscal and infrastructure deficits
