President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration had on Nov 15 approved the appointment of the unidentified Malaysian consultants to help conduct a study that would aid the implementation of its Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).
It claimed that the consultants had done a similar capacity-building exercise in Malaysia.
The rationale behind the plan costing 458 million Nigerian naira (RM5.27 million) was questioned by Ayodele Fayose, the governor of the country’s Ekiti state.
He was quoted by the Abuja-based Daily Trust newspaper yesterday as saying that it indicated the government was clueless about resolving the nation’s economic crisis.
He said it was also a “clear vote of no confidence” on Buhari’s government and Nigeria’s own economic experts.
He said it was shameful that a country which produced the likes of African Development Bank (ADB) president Akinwumi Adesina, World Bank treasurer and vice-president Arunma Oteh, as well as other corporate and financial figures at the world stage, was paying people from Malaysia to revive its economy.
In a statement yesterday, he said “out-sourcing consultancy for the conduct of study that would aid the implementation of the national economic recovery and growth plan is tantamount to telling Nigerians that they all lack capacity to govern their own country”.
Fayose, who chairs the governors’ forum of the People’s Democratic Party, a federal opposition outfit, said it was left to Nigerians to use their votes to remove Buhari and his All Progressives Congress party from power in the general election expected in 2019.
“How can you hire foreign consultants who would work for 13 weeks to conduct a study on how to revive the economy of a country like Nigeria and pay the consultant 458 million naira?” Fayose said.
“By hiring economic experts from Malaysia, President Buhari and his men have confirmed that they have no capacity to govern this country.”
He also accused the administration of being responsible for the devaluation of the naira and rise in prices of essential items like a bag of rice which he said had shot up from N7,000 (RM80), when Buhari took office in 2015, to N22,000 (RM253) today.
He said the government’s “cluelessness” had also caused the number of unemployed Nigerians to rise from 7.51 million in October 2015 to 11.19 million in September 2016.
On Nov 15, Nigeria’s Budget and National Planning Minister Udo Udoma had announced that the federal executive council had approved the retention of the consultants to help conduct three pilot labs — in agriculture and transportation, power and gas, and manufacturing and processing.
“What the council has approved today is that we bring in some consultants who did a similar thing in Malaysia to try to help us build our own capacity,” Udoma was quoted as saying by the Premium Times.
“They will just help us at the beginning and after that we will take over and do it ourselves,” he added.
The news reports did not name the consulting firm or consultants.