ABUJA – Senate of the Federal Republic yesterday, resumed from its 6-week break and charged the executive to immediately establish engagement platform with the private sector to redress the current failure of Nigeria economy.
In his welcome address, Senate President Bukola Saraki urged the Federal Government to sell off all its assets and holdings so as to raise capital and increase our foreign reserves.
He further enjoined the executive to dialogue with the Niger Delta militants with a view to improving upon crude production out-put, and provide social safety net for the Nigerian people.
The Senate President also stressed the need for the government to embark on direct support for agriculture and productivity.
He regretted what he described as harrowing poverty at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps and urged that it be redressed immediately.
“The Executive and CBN must agree on a policy of monetary easing to stimulate the economy and harmonise monetary and fiscal policy until economic recovery is attained.
We must ensure local government borrowing does not crowd out credit for the private sector”, he continued.
Turning to the senators, the SP urged them to down play their political defferences and come together in the interest of the country’s economy.
“It is impossible to under-estimate the dissipation in the land; everywhere you go, there is hunger in our land and our people want solutions to their problems.
The ordinary person is not so interested in how we got here or who to blame for our current situation.
To them, the only explanation that makes sense at the moment is that which puts food on the table, reduces price of rice, garri, salt, sugar, meat and saves jobs.
We must therefore, do something drastic and quick to restore confidence in governance; our response to the current challenge must be dictated by the urgency of the hardship that the people suffer on a daily basis.
We must have an urgent debate on the way forward. In having this debate, we must resist the temptation of drowning the debate with apportioning blames that will neither bring solutions to the problem or reduce the cost of rice, maize or cooking oil in the market.
Rather, this debate must be solution-driven. It must be people-oriented and less political.
Distinguished colleagues, the simple question for our debate must be; how do we tame the widespread hunger in the land? How do we save our businesses from collapse? How do we save jobs for the majority and create even a lot more? Only a few months ago, Naira was exchanging to the dollar at N200; today it is approaching N500. How do we arrest this drift so that our businesses can compete and our children can go to school wherever they may find opportunities?”, he added.
