By Fola James
The Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed has finally admitted that efforts by the federal governments to salvage the country from the devastating effects of the corona virus will not be enough to save the economy from an imminent recession.
She said the only way out is for Nigerians to embrace farming to make food abundant for all,
Within five years, the country has faced economy downturn after the very first one experienced in 2016, a year after President Muhammadu Buhari took power.
The minister based her projections on the revelation by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics that the nation’s economy activities have greatly slowed down in the last three months.
Recent efforts made by the government to put the economy back to work after the slow down resulting COVID 19 include borrowing from international partners such as the IMF, World Bank and sale of bonds to raise funds for critical infrastructure.
But Speaking in Abuja on Thursday after the virtual National Economic Council, chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, the minister said the economy has bit badly hit, but added that all will be done to put it back on full throttle.
Citing the NBS, the minister said, “The National Bureau of Statistics has made an assessment. So, it is the NBS assessment that Nigeria will go into a recession measuring at an average of -4.4 per cent.
But with the work that the Economic Accessibility Committee is doing bringing stimulus packages, we believe that we can reduce the impact of that recession.
She explained that recession is certain that Nigerians should be ready to whether the storm.
From all indications, there’s no escape route to recession “And if we applied all that have been proposed and we are able to implement it we may end up with a recession that is -0.4 per cent.
In any case, we will go into recession but what we are trying to do is to make sure that it is shallow so that we will quickly come out of it come 2021.”
Life after COVID 19 will not remain the same again, she stated, adding that Nigerians should take their destinies in their hands by engaging in full time farming so as to escape full scarcity.
The minister warned that “This is a very difficult time because the challenges we have now are double. There is health challenge, there is an economic challenge.
Even as we are addressing the current health challenge, we still have to look at how we can support the economy so that the economy does not fall into a depression.
We have to feed the people and you can only feed the people if people go out and farm. We are a very large population, we don’t want to take the risk and we don’t have enough funds to cushion the effect.”
