Former Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, said on Sunday that the current recession which Nigeria has plunged into, was worse than the one experienced in 2016.
Obi who made the assertion when he appeared on Channels Television’s Sunday Politic called on politicians to put issues of 2023 aside and focus on how to rescue the country from the current economic crisis.
He said that solving the economic problems of Nigeria was more important than political permutations geared towards the next general elections.
The vice-presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 elections lamented that monies borrowed by the present government were not put to good use.
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He blamed the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari for not adequately preparing Nigerians for the impact of COVID-19.
He opined: “Every other country is discussing the recession and how to pull their people out of poverty.
“So what we should do now is to concentrate on the monetary and fiscal policies to start pulling people out of poverty.
“If you see what happened with recent protests, you could see that we are heading into a problem.
“And I want our energy to be concentrated in that problem. The politicians, the class where I belong, should do more seriously, across party lines, to be able to arrest the situation before it gets out of hand.
“For me, it is in discussing how do we put food on people’s table? Elections will come and we can see how to select the best. But let’s deal with the recession we have just entered before 2023.
“The cost of governance is not acceptable.
“There is too much waste. This recession is going to be worse than in 2016 because the monies we borrowed were not properly invested.”
