The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, said Nigeria’s economy has not collapsed as being speculated, stressing that the year 2016 is going to be tough given the fact that crude oil price has not stabilised.
Speaking at the Business Eye Roundtable Discussion tiled “Nigerian Economy 2016: Charting way forward , Amaechi said, “We are going to have tough time in 2016 because the crude oil benchmark that the Federal Government fixed for the budget is less than what the price is right now.
“The Federal Government fixed N38 per barrel while the price now is less than N30 per barrel. Nevertheless, Nigerian economy has not bottom out as some people do say. With the corruption fight by Buhari’s administration and blocking of leakages, the economy will bounce back with time, but individuals have to make sacrifices.
“If Nigerians had revolted during the period that public funds were missing and stolen, things would not have been like this.”
He stated that the missing $49bn oil revenue, which the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido, alleged that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) did not remit into the Federation Account would be looked into.
He said, “Even before Sanusi and President Goodluck Jonathan began to quarrel, I had to leak that letter. Sanusi wrote that letter to the President in September, I leaked it sometime in January, and that letter was personal: ‘Mr. President, $49bn was missing,’ and I got a copy of that letter.
“Instead of the Federal Government to say we are going to address this, they began to debate with the CBN governor and Nigerians joined in the debate. Oh, it is not possible. Now, they have seen that is possible.”
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