Fayose slams FG over ‘hiring of Malaysian economic experts for N458m’

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose has questioned the rationale behind the Federal Government’s  hiring of consultants from Malaysia with the sum of N458 million to help Nigeria build her economic capacity.

He said, “the Federal Government’s action is a clear vote of no confidence on President Muhammadu Buhari’s government and economic experts in the country.”

The governor, who said; “it is shameful that Nigeria, which produced the likes of African Development Bank (ADB) President, Dr Akinwumi Adesina; Treasurer and Vice President of the World Bank, Mrs Aruma Otteh; Independent Non-Executive Director of Standard Chartered Plc, United Kingdom, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Professor of Political Economy, Pat Utomi; among others is now paying people from Malaysia to revive its economy.”

In a statement issued on Sunday, and signed by Special Assistant to the governor on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said “out-sourcing consultancy for the conduct of study that would aid the implementation of the National Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) is tantamount to telling Nigerians that they all lack capacity to govern their own country.”

He asked; How can you hire foreign consultants that would work for 13 weeks to conduct a study on how to revive the economy of a country like Nigeria and pay the consultant N458 million?”

Governor Fayose said he had said it several times that the APC government of Buhari lacked the clue as to how to solve our country’s economic problems, adding that; “Now they have just confirmed that truly, they are clueless.”

He said; “By hiring economic experts from Malaysia, President Buhari and his men have confirmed that they have no capacity to govern this country.

“It was the cluelessness of the Buhari’s government that made the exchange rate that was N197 to $1 as at May 29, 2015, rise to as much as N500 to $1 before it came down to about N370 to $1. Today, the official rate is N305 to $1.

“It was this same cluelessness that made one bag of rice that was N7,000 as at the time Buhari took office to rice to as much as N22,000 and made more than 25 states to be unable to pay workers salary regularly owing to dwindled revenue from the federation account.

“According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), an agency of the federal government, the number of unemployed Nigerians rose from 7.51 million at the beginning of October 2015 to 11.19 million at the end of September 2016! This was caused by Buhari’s government cluelessness.

“Like I have said before, President Buhari and his men do not know what to do. It is therefore left for Nigerians use their votes to show Buhari and his APC the way out of the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in 2019.”