Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has said the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government is working hard as proven by the administration’s feat of taking the country out of recession.
Mohammed whilst speaking on Wednesday at the 4th Annual Conference of the Association of Communication Scholars and Professionals of Nigeria in Kano, said the current administration’s articulated economic policies did the magic: “Taking Nigeria out of recession did not happen by accident. It is the culmination of months of hard work by the Administration and fidelity to its well-articulated economic policies, especially the Strategic Implementation Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) that was launched on 5th April, 2017. Though Nigeria has been on the path towards recession since mid-2014 due to a combination of factors, including the total dependence on a mono product – oil – and the failure to save during the boom years, the country officially slipped into recession in the 2nd Quarter of 2016. Of course, as you all know, a recession is generally defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP, which measures the economic performance of a country by how much production of goods and services it achieves, usually over the course of a year).”
He added that “the recession presented a scenario of contracted GDP (0.67%), stagflation, which occurs when periods of low economic growth or Economic Contraction in GDP coincide with periods of elevated Inflation, which is often accompanied by high levels of Unemployment. At the same time, inflation increased from 9% in Jan 2016 to 18.6% in December of the same year; unemployment rate rose above 14% and there was a massive foreign reserves decline. But things are looking up now. For Nigeria to be out of recession means the Administration has taken some right steps that have culminated in the good news that we are celebrating now. It didn’t just happen.”
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