By Funso Alarape
Thursday, May 30, 2024
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The pan-Yoruba socio-cultural and socio-political organization, Afenifere has x-rayed the one year in office of the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and advised the President to rethink his government’s economic policies.
The organisation asserted that inflation and increased poverty which the government’s economic policies engendered are biting hard on the people.
In a release signed by Afenifere’s Publicity Secretary, Prince Justice Faloye, the group warned that if the Federal Government does not change its current economic policies it would further impoverish the citizens in the following years.
The group therefore called on the government to pay heed to the yearning of the masses and alleviate their plight.
It stated that the economy had experienced severe turbulence in the one-year administration of Tinubu.
Afenifere called for a better understanding of the economy to stop the alarming rate of inflation, devaluation, increasing unemployment, homelessness, and poverty.
“Firstly, it is an illogical economic belief that the subsidy removals and tax increases that remove money from the economy will stimulate economic growth. Therefore, the adoption of flawed neo-liberal theories of subsidy removal and unbridled tax increases must be stopped since they always contract the economy. Ours is no exception as companies are folding up and leaving due to fuel and electricity costs skyrocketing, fuelling galloping inflation and fall of real incomes.
“In apparent over-reliance on a one-sided monetary policy, this current government has been hiking interest rates with the Monetary Policy Rate standing currently at 26.25 percent from 18.5 percent a year earlier. The Central Bank of Nigeria also raised the Cash Reserve Ratio to 45 percent from its 32.5 percent position a year ago,” it said.
In another development, the leader of Afenifere, Chief Reuben Famuyide Fasoranti, has backed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration on the steps taken to grant the 774 local government areas in the country full autonomy.
The statement as signed by Afenifere National Publicity Secretary, Comrade Jare Ajayi quoted Pa Fasoranti as expressing delight at some bold steps that the President has taken in the last year aimed at repositioning Nigeria adroitly.
According to Ajayi, the Leader particularly commended Tinubu on his government’s effort to rescue local governments from the strangulating grip of state governors.
“It’s undebatable that local government is the closest to the people. For, it is through it that the people at the grassroots can effectively feel the impact of the government.
“As the situation is presently, however, the tight grip that state governors have on local governments is seriously denying the people of the benefits they should, by right, be deriving from their local governments.
“It’s in this respect that Pa Fasoranti described the latest step taken by the Attorney General Lateef Fagbemi on behalf of the federal government as a step in the right direction”, Ajayi quoted Fasoranti who is also the Asiwaju of Yoruba, as saying.
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