Again, Nigeria’s Finance Minister lampoons ex-President Buhari over dwindling economy

Olawale Edun, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, has again blamed immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari for the country’s economic meltdown.

Edun had a fortnight ago accused Buhari of crippling the economy by ordering the printing of 22.7 trillion Naira just for the purpose of being obtained as Ways and Means loan.

This, he said, was not properly utilized and must be probed, and possibly recovered and injected into the economy.

Speaking again on Wednesday during an  interaction with Committee on Finance of the Nigerian Senate, Edun maintained the process was done aimlessly.

He further stated that the alleged reckless spending of the overdraft collected from the CBN under Emefiele largely accounted for the country’s food and security crises.

He reaffirmed that the present administration will not renege its vow to audit the loan and CBN’s printing in the past eight years.

“We talked about inflation, and you helped solve that. Where has it come from?

“It came from the eight years of printing money not matched by productivity. It’s not like when you earn dollars and free the naira alongside it, although there’s even a better way than that. But that’s still not as bad.

“You distinguished senators have helped. You have given us the mandate to raise N7tn, which we will do by sucking money from the market, using it to pay back the Central Bank and giving the government a balanced book. We are going to audit even the N22.7 trillion printed aimlessly.”