Recession exit: "Buhari should rejig cabinet to stimulate recovery"

The Centre for Social Justice on Thursday called on President Muhammadu Buhari to rejig his cabinet by getting technocrats that would effectively manage key sectors of the Nigerian economy.


The group said this in a statement containing it’s analysis of the Gross Domestic Product growth rate report released on Tuesday by the National Bureau of Statistics.

The report had shown that in the second quarter of this year, Nigeria finally exited it’s worst recession in 25 years with a GDP growth rate of 0.55 per cent having recorded five consecutive quarters of decline.

In its analysis which was made available to our correspondent by the Lead Director, CSJ, Mr Eze Onyekpere, the group explained that there is need for deliberate policies to boost key sectors of the economy.

This, the group said, could be achieved through fast-tracking the reforms in the ease of doing business, provision of incentives to sectors that could stimulate productive activities.

It said, “In view of the less than one per cent GDP growth, stating that Nigeria has come out of recession is more or less like holding onto any available straw of hope.

“With a population growth rate of 2.7 per cent per annum, this GDP growth is not significant. Moreover, Nigeria had grown consistently by about 6 percent in the years before the recession.

“Thus, there is nothing to celebrate. Rather, this is a call to roll up our sleeves through increased incentives for improved production and service delivery; fast tracking the ease of doing business initiatives and interventions;rejig the cabinet and get more experts and practical men and women to run key sectors of the economy.”

It said with the low performance of the non-oil sector in the second quarter, there is need for the Federal Government to mainstream the local content policy at all tiers of government as well as produce a 2018 federal budget that is structured to grow the economy and develop human capacity.

It added that adequate steps should be taken to stop the strikes in the education and health sectors in order not to reduce the productivity of the sector which may in turn affect the GDP of the third quarter.