A chieftain and founding father of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Osita Okechukwu, has admitted that the microeconomic indicators of President Bola Tinubu’s reforms are poor and have failed Nigerians.
Okechukwu made this statement during an interview on Arise Television’s Prime Time on Tuesday.
He, however, said the economic reforms had performed well at the macroeconomic level.
According to him, the high cost of living, declining purchasing power and significant unemployment persist despite Nigeria’s large youth population.
He added that the devaluation of the naira had hindered the importation of machinery by small and medium-sized enterprises, while rising energy costs had further stifled industrial growth.
“The economic reforms have done well at the macroeconomic level, but microeconomic indicators are very poor.
“When we talk about the purchasing power of the citizenry, the high cost of living and joblessness, the president’s economic reform programme has not helped.
“It didn’t help because the assumption in the neoliberal doctrine is that it will propel the private sector. However, there are indicators inhibiting that growth. Small-scale and medium-scale industries are performing poorly.
“When you float the naira, it becomes difficult for them to import machinery, and rising energy costs make it even more difficult. These are tangential to the reform programme,” Okechukwu said.
