ACCOMPLISH MAGAZINE APRIL 2024

FEATURE / ANALYSIS
• President Bola Ahmed Tinubu
We talked about inflation. Where
has it come from? It came from 8
years of just printing money not
matched by productivity. What
happened was that for eight years,
the weak were left to their own
devices. It is the privileged few that
took everything. That is the reality.
So that money supply must be
brought back.”
It is obvious that Edun has spoken
with unusual forthrightness and
without any reservations about
whose ox or cattle is gored! He
spoke on Wednesday, March
6, 2024, to the Nigerian Senate
Committee on Finance and
noted that “You have given us the
mandate to raise N7 trillion which
we will do by sucking money from
the market, using it to pay back the
CBN and giving the government
a balanced book. We are going to
audit even the N22.7 trillion printed
aimlessly.”
It was Peter Schiff, an American
investor, stockbroker, author and
commentator on financial matters
who warned that “Printing money
is merely taxation in another form.
Rather than robbing citizens of
their money, government robs
their money of its purchasing
power.”
Edun’s formal, influential and
expansive ministerial designation
is the same as that given first to
the highly accomplished Dr. Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, currently, the 7th
The N22.7 trillion
printed by the
Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN)
through Ways and
Means overdraft
for the federal
government from
2015 to 2023 landed
Nigeria into hyperinflation
Director-General of the World
Trade Organisation (WTO). She
assumed this latest position on
March 1, 2021, and became the
first woman and the first African
to serve as such. Mr. Edun, a
technocrat, had as his immediate
predecessor (during the Buhari
era) Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed
who held an expansive but
different designation (for 4 years)
as Nigeria’s Minister of Finance,
Budget and National Planning,
from 2019 to 2023. She served as
Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, from
2018 to 2019. She’s a sibling of the
immediate former Governor of
Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai.
Sadly, as I stated in previous
analyses, Nigerians gave Buhari
their trust, their sacred votes
and their last drip of hope but
he disappointed them. The
bitter truth remains that despite
the Goebbelian propaganda,
Nigerians endured 8 long, bloody
and difficult years of insecurities,
religion-based conflicts/killings,
the banking fiasco and truckloads
of palaver. For millions of Nigerians
who live, these days, months
and years, a tormenting life of
hardships, blood, sorrow and tears,
Edun’s weighty allegation is yet
another reminder of the ruin and
seemingly endless incompetence
of the Buhari regime.
IF what Mr. Edun has alleged as
examples of former President
Buhari’s actions which ruined
Nigeria’s economy and unleashed
inflationary rates to the sky,
and caused the exponentially
unprecedented decimation of the
value/exchange rate of the Naira,
I think he should be accorded the
privilege to respond; as should his
financial/economic teams and
Central Bank leadership during the
8 years of the Buhari presidency
— a presidency of small things,
of petty malice and ancient
grudges, of crass nepotism and
clannishness, of moral corruption
and assorted inequities, of
impunity and incapacity!
CHIDO
NWANGWU
AUTHOR’S BIO
Dr. Chido Nwangwu, author
of the forthcoming 2024 book,
MLK, Mandela & Achebe: Power,
Leadership and Identity, is
Founder of the first Africanowned,
U.S-based newspaper on
the internet, USAfricaonline.com.
He has appeared as an analyst
on CNN, ALJazeera, SKYnews,
etc. Follow him on X (Twitter) @
Chido247.
www.theaccomplishmagazine.com
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