Nigerians within and in diaspora have continued to show concern over the unprecedented slip of the nation’s economy into another recession after the last one in 2016.
An Economist Chika Onuegbu in an interview with our reporter said that this recession is not coming to him as a surprise, going by the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the global economy and the residual effect of the economic shut down, which was done in respect to Covid-19. He added that the present recession is the worst in the history of Nigeria.
“The Covid-19 shut down restricted movement and economic activities, that is why you can see that the GDP in quarter two fell very seriously to minus 6.1. While there is recovery in quarter three, it is still negative because the economic activities has not fully kicked off” he said.
Mr Chika Onuegbu further explained that the impact of the border closure, which has negatively affected the prices of goods, the fall in oil price and the oil production, has also led to the government not been able to have enough foreign exchange inflow, to be able to address the foreign exchange demand.
Onuegbu who is also the deputy national president of Trade Union Congress (TUC) however, advised the Federal Government to put measures in place to take the country out of recession.
In his words: “This is very serious, but all hope is not lost. The government must act quickly to see how they can get the economy out of recession. Government need to kick start the various sector of economy”
The TUC national deputy president also advised the government to review the policy of border closure, and find out whether it is helping or destroying the economy. He explained that, you can not have an economy that has gone into recession, and in that economy, exchange rate is depreciating seriously and then inflation is at 14%.
“By the time you compare that with the poverty and unemployment rate, you will know that it is a recipe for disaster”, he further stated.
Meanwhile, the Rivers State chairman of Civil Liberty Organization (CLO), Sotonye George in his own reaction told our reporter that the issue of recession will continue in the country if Federal Government fails to address corruption and electricity production. He also said that Federal Government has to improve on production cost than administrative cost.
“The present government is not handling the economic affairs fairly. And this is to show that all money is used to run administrative cost and than production cost”, he said.
Sotonye further said it is expensive to run a company in Nigeria and power is what they use in creating industry. He revealed that once power is out of any country, then there is the possibility of having recession.
