According to him, his performance as CBN governor was
unprecedented and locally as well as globally acknowledged. “In Nigeria’s
history, no governor of the Central Bank has delivered 24 consecutive months of
single digit inflation as I did until the advent of the unprecedented global
crisis in 2008,” he said. Continue below...
He also challenged claims by Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala, who is also
the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, that the Nigerian economy is doing
well. He accused Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala of running the country’s economy aground.
“You are brilliant Madam, but you need serious help,” he
said.
“Having spent all
your life in the World Bank bureaucracy largely in administration/operations,
no one will blame you if your economics has become a bit rusty. There are
firebrand Nigerians all over the world to draft to service. It is certainly
embarrassing to Nigeria for you to be bothering World Bank economists to help
you with most basic economic analysis, he said.”
“What worries me is that this government is the first in our
history to attempt to manipulate our national statistics under Okonjo-Iweala.
When NBS published the poverty figures in 2011, she felt indicted and incensed.
She called upon the World Bank to come and examine the ‘methodology’ and get
NBS to ‘review’ its numbers. Oby Ezekwesili (as VP Africa Region rejected the
call to try to tamper with a country’s statistics). Once Oby left, the ‘World
Bank’ started talking about ‘new figures’, without conducting any new surveys.
“I was told about it by a World Bank economist, and I
cautioned that it was a dangerous gamble that would damage the credibility of
the NBS. If you want to ‘review methodology’, you conduct another survey but
you can’t change ‘methodology’ because you don’t like the published figures. No
government in our history has tried it: even Sani Abacha allowed a poverty
survey that put poverty at 67% under his regime. At this rate, who will believe
statistics coming from the Nigerian government again? Is it now the World Bank
that sits in Washington and allocates poverty numbers to Nigeria? Something
smells here!”Mr Soludo said.
If you want to continue reading what Mr Soludo said, click
here to read it in full. But be warned, it is not for lazy readers. It's over
6000 words. No be gossip o, lol.
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