A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, Segun Sowunmi, has knocked the Federal Government for running the economy on palliatives since the removal of petrol subsidy.
Sowunmi led this out during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Monday, called on the President Bola Tinubu administration to increase workers’ salaries in earnest.
The PDP chieftain decried that the naira is going down and those saddled with fiscal responsibilities don’t know how to stabilise the currency.
He argued that the Nigerian economy should not be built for impressive Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and stock exchange figures or for the applause of global rating bodies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Sowunmi said: “On the economy, he (Tinubu) needs to let people understand, especially Wale Edun, (Yemi) Cardoso and all of them, he (Tinubu) needs to let them understand that: ‘I am not trying to build an economy solely for GDP so that Bretton Woods organisations such as the World Bank and IMF can be giving me pass marks.
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“I am not interested; I am interested in building an economy that is resilience, serves the poor people of Nigerian and give them the opportunity to live the type of life that the Renewed Hope is supposed to be’.
“Let me tell you what would have happened if he had increased salaries of civil servants, they have been getting that increased salaries in a sustained manner, private sector would have followed up to keep their workforce, that money would have gone back into the market and you would have seen the economy growing.
“You can’t run a big economy on palliatives, especially when you are running the palliatives on wholesales and not retail.”
