Atiku Abubakar, the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the 2023 general elections, has said President Ahmed Tinubu’s one year in office did not produce tangible results because he unleashed reforms without an implementation plan.
Atiku made this statement in an article he made public on Tuesday.
According to him, President Bola Tinubu during his inauguration raised the hopes of Nigerians with his pledge to ‘remodel the economy to bring about growth and development through job creation, food security and an end of extreme poverty.
The former Vice-President explained that since making the pronouncement, Tinubu has also spoken about growing the economy at double-digit rates to US$1 trillion in six years, ending misery, and bringing immediate relief to Nigeria’s cost-of-living crisis.
Atiku said on listening to the pronouncement, Nigerians must have breathed a sigh of relief after their experience with ex-President Buhari’s 8 years of economic misadventure.
“Tinubu laid out no plans for the ‘remodelling’ of the economy but soon embarked on a cocktail of policies to achieve it.
“In May 2023, he eliminated PMS subsidies, and a month later, the CBN implemented a new foreign exchange policy that unified the multiple official FX windows into a single official market.
“More policies followed in rapid succession: the tightening of monetary policy to reduce Naira liquidity, a hike in monetary policy rates, the introduction of cost-reflective electricity tariff, and a cybersecurity tax.
“Predictably, 12 months on, Tinubu’s pledge of growing the economy and ending misery remains unfulfilled.
“His actions or inactions have significantly worsened Nigeria’s macroeconomic stability. Nigeria remains a struggling economy and is more fragile today than it was a year ago,” he said.