Present Economic Hardship May Last Five Years – Moghalu

The former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Kingsley Moghalu, has said the current economic hardship in the country will last for five years.

Moghalu said this on Tuesday during his keynote speech at the Leadership Newspaper Group 2024 Conference and Awards night, which was held in Abuja.

The former presidential candidate blamed unprecedented corruption, mismanagement and incompetent policy response as the primary factors responsible for the nation’s distressed economy.

He said that hyperinflation, the crisis of the value of the Naira, debt distress, revenue challenges, unemployment, and extreme poverty were all consequences of an economy that had been mismanaged for a long time.

He said, “The past 10 years were particularly ruinous. They were the years of the locust, marked by unprecedented mismanagement of fiscal policy, unproductive external borrowing, unnecessary budget deficits, illegal Ways & Means lending by the Central Bank of Nigeria to the federal government to the tune of N30tn, and unprecedented corruption.

“Earlier, a combination of oil price shocks and an incompetent policy response from the CBN, in the form of an attempt to fix the exchange rate, all helped give us two recessions within seven years. Many of these things happened because, as we witnessed, there was a successful political assault on the independence of the central bank, with the storekeeper willingly handing over the store keys to the marauders.

“Nigeria is in a crisis regardless of whatever short-term measures are taken, and the success of those measures or lack of it, this crisis and its effects would be with us for a minimum of three to five years.”