Dumebi Kachikwu, the former presidential candidate of the Action Democratic Congress (ADC), has said that one of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s main errors at this point in his administration is the fact that he has not made appointments for his ministerial cabinet, and that his advisers had missed the mark in assisting him in his duties.
In an interview with ARISE NEWS on Monday morning, the former presidential aspirant said he believed that President Tinubu was in a “‘na me be this’ phase,” where he was thrilled with his becoming the president after a long time, and as such he was focused on receiving family, friends and well wishers rather than focusing on the state of the country.
Kachikwu said, “For someone who wants to hit the ground running, he ought to have had his cabinet ready from day one. He has not done this, and a lot of people are disappointed.”
He then pointed out that the President could only work well with his advisers, which led him to say, “Our president or any president can only be as good as his advisers. I don’t know the people who are advising him, but I believe they’ve gotten it wrong. He’s made some good steps in what he’s trying to do in terms of unifying the exchange rate, but again, you can’t take a step and take two steps forward and take ten steps backwards.”
He gave further examples using the unifying of the exchange rate, which actions that stemmed from had led to a rise in the inflation rate of the country, which counters the fact that the government wants to fight inflation, saying, “Like what I said about the exchange rate, if you see what’s happening at the ports now, the government is now using the new exchange rate to tax all imports into the country. What this means is that we have escalated costs for every good that is coming into Nigeria. That triggers inflation. The government benefits from inflation but the same government says they’re fighting inflation.”
He then said that he expected that the government would have looked critically at the matter as it would eventually have a huge impact on the economy.
He also said fuel subsidy should have been temporarily removed, then put back in place after measures had been cemented to ensure that subsidy is not abused, as Nigerians did not deserve to “suffer for the failures of a few people or for the failure of the government not to be able to manage the process of subsidy.”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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