Anambra State Governor, Prof Charles Soludo, on Thursday, said that President Bola Tinubu-led government inherited a dead economy from its predecessors.
Soludo who made the remark on Thursday while commenting on the policies of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme described the Nigeria under previous administrations as a dead horse that was still standing and people didn’t know it was dead.
He added. “Because you can’t pour water on a rock and not expect the rock not to be wet, there are humungous challenges and I think it is important that Nigerians understand this and it is not a tea party.”
When he headed the central bank from 2004 to 2009, Soludo explained his role in imposing restrictions on monetary systems and charged the CBN with money printing without authorization.
“We must realise where we are coming from,” he said.
“We sat here in this country and saw the monetary authorities literally printing money, illegally I must say, because I superintended the development of drafting of the 2007 Bank Act.”
“And to prevent us from where we are today, that is why we had an explicit clause there that prevents Central Bank from lending recklessly to the Federal Government.
“That you can not grant to the Federal Government more than 5 percent of the previous year’s actual revenue.”
He maintained that the CBN failed to comply with the 2007 CBN Act, adding that the current monetary trajectory was avoidable in the first place.
“We all sat here and saw how the CBN brazenly, illegally violated that law year after year and kept on printing money,” the governor said.
“When you continue to credit the account of government, one trillion people shouted, two trillion,10 trillion, 15 trillion and 20 trillion and we kept going.”
Vanguard News
