FG, NGF, Ezekwesili clash over Soludo

The Federal Government on Wednesday said the five-year tenure of Prof. Chukwuma Soludo as the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria was a disaster to the banking sector.

While the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, described Soludo's criticism of the management of the economy under President Goodluck Jonathan as 'intellectual hara-kiri,' a former Minister of Education, Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili, called for a public debate by all parties on the actual state of the economy.

Similarly, a faction of the Nigeria Governors' Forum (NGF) led by Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State described as illusionary and attention-seeking, Soludo's recent article on the state of the economy.

A statement released in Abuja and signed by the Secretary and Administrator of the Jang faction of the Nigeria Governors' Forum, Mr. Osaro Onaiwu, stated that members of the faction were at a loss as to the motive behind the Soludo article, adding that the 'half-truths and falsehood in the article could not be a sincere attempt to contribute to the national discourse, but rather a failed attempt at self-aggrandisement.'

Soludo, who was the CBN governor between May 2004 and May 2009, had on Monday written an article in which he claimed that the Nigerian economy under Jonathan had performed woefully.

While reacting to the article, Okonjo-Iweala through a statement issued by her Special Adviser on Communications, Mr. Paul Nwabuikwu, said not only was it littered with abusive and unbecoming language, it showed Soludo, whom she described as an 'embittered loser in the Nigerian political space,' could get so derailed by misquoting economic facts and maliciously turning statistics on their head to justify a hatchet job.

However, Ezekwesili said on her Twitter handle shortly after Okonjo-Iweala's response was made public, that the 'nation and people seem to be on an accelerated race to the bottom. So sad! Why would a statement from (the) government read like that? Gosh!'

She also demanded to know what had happened to the report of the forensic audit on the reported missing $20bn from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation as alleged by Sanusi shortly before he was suspended from office by the President.

Okonjo-Iweala had said the Federal Government had hired forensic auditors to scrutinise the accounts of the NNPC following the controversies generated by the allegation of the missing money. But up untill now, the report of the audit has not been made public.

In a telephone interview with one of our correspondents, Ezekwesili said that rather than resort to abusive language over Soludo's comments, the government and the critics of its management of the economy should opt for a national dialogue where the touted achievements of the administration of the President could be subjected to deeper analysis.

In an earlier tweet, she had said that with the character of the response the managers of the economy, have given to Soludo, 'a debate is imperative.'

She told one of our correspondents that if the government had been receptive to her observations made in a lecture she delivered at the convocation of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in January 2013 on the management of the external reserves and the ECA, the nation would not have found herself in the current economic crisis as a result of dwindling revenue from crude oil.- Punch.