Nigerians need to stop saying ‘May Nigeria never happen to you’ — Oyedele
Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, has called on Nigerians to stop using the expression ‘May Nigeria never happen to you’.
Oyedele said on Saturday at The Platform, an event organised by the Covenant Nation, that the “worst is behind us” as per the challenges faced by Nigerians due to President Bola Tinubu’s reforms which have increased the cost of living.
“There is nothing wrong with Nigeria. But maybe there is something wrong with the people ruling Nigeria,” he said. “In America, people get killed every day by gunmen. But have you ever heard Americans say, ‘May America never happen to you?’ Let’s stop saying, ‘May Nigeria never happen to you.’ Maybe we can turn it into, ‘May Nigeria work for me.’”
Expressing confidence in the country’s economic trajectory, he said: “Going by available data, I personally believe that the worst is behind us. Removing subsidies is the best decision we made as a country. And we can now say that, for once, subsidy is gone.
“We were living on window-dressed realities. If you look back to about two years ago, the naira exchange rate was N450 depending on who you asked. But was our exchange rate really N450? If you wanted to buy petrol, it was under N200 per litre, but was it really under N200 per litre?”
Oyedele highlighted the unsustainable nature of the pre-reform economy, stating: “Nigeria used all its revenue to service debts. We were not paying debts back; we were just servicing them. In other words, everything else we did—from paying salaries to fighting Boko Haram—was funded by borrowing.”
According to him, Nigeria’s excessive reliance on borrowing brought the country to the brink of economic collapse.
“There were countries where you could hold money and still not get fuel to buy. In Sri Lanka, there was a time you couldn’t drive your car every day of the week because there was no fuel,” he said.
Oyedele stressed the detrimental impact of excessive money printing on the economy.
“We printed close to N40 trillion, plus interest. And we were surprised there was inflation. Nigerians don’t realise that the invisible controls the visible. The removal of subsidies is not something you can see physically—it is not tangible,” he said.
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