Buhari under pressure to allow cabal control economy- Falana

Human rights activist and Lagos lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), yesterday said that President Muhammadu Buhari is under pressure by some political forces to tilt his economic policies.

Falana said they want the economy to be under the control of a few hands.

He said the president has been inundated with numerous suggestions on how to handle the nation’s cash cow, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), especially on issues bordering on corruption against the agency, but noted that their argument clearly lacked merit.

Falana said this yesterday in Abuja at the public presentation of the book, ‘Economic Diplomacy and Nigeria’s Foreign Policy’ written by the immediate past chairman of the board of TETFund, Dr. Musa Babayo.

“The national planning has been abandoned for market forces by those who control our country. What is going on now, even from the APC, there are people that are mounting pressure on President Buhari to continue to run the economy of Nigeria in the interest of a few people and in the personal minority interest of captains of industry without industry.

“But I think the president answered them last week; you know their campaign now is that “you must remove fuel subsidy, you must devalue the currency, you must privatize NNPC of all institutions” and the president said “I am not going to privatize NNPC, I will break it into two for effective performance,” which I think is the best for our country.”

He also wrote-off those accusing Buhari’s administration of lacking clear focus and direction, saying the new government has activated a constitutional provision which would ensure that all cases of corruption emanating from the anti-graft agencies would be dispensed with in the law court within a maximum of six months time frame.

Reacting to President Buhari’s recent state visit to the United States of America, Falana explained that the country has benefited hugely from the visit.

“I think we must be honest with ourselves, if there was anything the president has achieved in his visit to America not just just for Africa, but the entire world is that for the first time the United States of America has pledged to help a country recover her looted wealth”.

He stated that there was a need for the Buhari’s administration to probe the privatisation policies of previous administration.

The human rights lawyer said government has a duty to cut cost of governance by first pruning down the number of embassies in other countries.

“There’s an area that we need to develop now that the government is trying to cut cost. We have too many embassies all over the world. I got to a country in Africa recently and discover that the country has a population of about 300,000 and we have an embassy there.

“We have embassies in the 16 member states of West Africa and in all African countries. I think we have to do something about that,” he said.

Earlier in his remarks, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, said decades of talks on diversification of the economy from a mono-economy should now be translated into concrete actions.

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According to Gambari, in the light of the new global realities and power configuration, there is an urgent need to bring together all major stakeholders to foster better economic management.

He said government must tackle headlong the current socio-economic challenges, such as high poverty level, huge youth unemployment and perennial disconnect between the government and the citizens has invariably led to high levels of distrust on the leaders and the rest of the citizens.

On his part, Dr. Musa Babayo called on President Buhari to turn his attention to the activities of multinational corporations in Nigeria with a view of repatriating funds due to Nigeria and putting a stop to further bleeding of the nation’s economy.

He said Nigeria is estimated to have lost over $157 billion between 2003 and 2012 to Illicit Financial Flows (IFF) as revealed by Global Financial Integrity.

‎Babayo said the urge to focus on the flows was informed by the fact that estimates may have varied and opened to contest as there is the general consensus that the IFFs from Africa surpass aid flows and foreign investment to the continent and by volumes.