By Ishaya Ibrahim
The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has said that the top spot Nigeria’s economy is occupying in Africa is the result of the successful implementation of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).
The ERGP was a plan designed to lift Nigeria out of the recession the country entered in 2016.
A statement signed by the chairman of BMO, Niyi Akinsiju, and the secretary, Cassidy Madueke, said with Nigeria’s economy growing at 2.27 percent in 2019 compared to South Africa’s 0.2 percent, Nigeria is now the biggest economy in the continent of Africa.
“This is not happenstance but in line with the implementation of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan.
“Despite hitches in crude oil production and price in 2019, the country’s current GDP moved exponentially, as it were, to $476 billion leaving behind South Africa’s GDP at $352 billion.
“Nigeria now surpasses South Africa to become the biggest economy in Africa with total differences of $124 billion GDP growth and it shows we have grown in term of strength and capacity.
“Generally what is apparent in this figure that President Buhari is on top of economic direction and management, he understands the best policy to deploy and it is the impact of those policies that is being reflected in our GDP figures in relative to other countries in Africa.
“The truth is, despite the global headwinds in terms of quantitative of our crude oil produced, price of crude oil, scarcity of dollar as a result in fall in crude oil prices over time, despite this shortfall we have a President that has been able to manage those crises and deploy resources in an efficient and effective manner,” the statement said.
According to the BMO, the growth has also impacted the manufacturing sector.
Quoting data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the BMO said the total monetary value of the manufacturing sector’s output rose from N12.45 trillion to N16.78 trillion with an increase of N4.33 trillion, representing 34.78 percent in 2019 when compared to 2018.
“It implies expansion and increases in employment; we cannot as a country expand from N12.45 trillion to N16.78 trillion without implication for expansion of productivity itself.
“It also means that we are employing people as a country to facilitate our expansion capacity which makes it feasible to lift 100millon people out of poverty in 10 years.”
According to the pro-Buhari group, Nigeria entered into a recession in 2016 for reasons of previous administrations’ bad policies, failure to save, stealing and incompetence that were beyond the control of the President Buhari administration.
“The previous administration had run the country in the most inept fashion, there was high-handed malfeasance of the country’s wealth, and previous administrations did not save, but allowed for the stealing of our resources.
“For us, recession was to correct the mistake of the past and it has given us a direction on where to go, what is important for Nigerians is to come into the mainstream as the momentum for growth is increasing.
“What the Buhari administration did on coming on board was to reset the faulty, shaky and unsustainable economic foundation that the previous administration had left. It began the reconstruction of our economy and began to set the country on a new path and trajectory of real growth, the kind that we are celebrating today,” the statement said.
