Human right lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), on Monday, July 27, 2015 said that the Nigerian economy was under threat as a cabal within the All Progressives Congress (APC) was hell bent on hijacking it from President Muhammadu Buhari.
He made the declaration at the public presentation of the book entitled: “Economic diplomacy and Nigeria’s foreign policy”, written by the immediate chairman, Board of Tertiary Education Trust Fund and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, Dr. Musa Babayo.
Speaking in reaction to President Buhari’s recent trip to the US where several Nigerian businessmen and industrialists were allegedly prevented from meeting the president, Falana said that the development amongst others may be responsible for why President Buhari was not forthcoming with his plan for the country’s economy two months after he assumed office.
He said: “The national planning have been abandoned for market forces by those who control our country, and what is going on now, even from the APC, there are people that are mounting pressure on President Buhari to continue to run the economy of Nigeria in the interest of a few people and in the personal minority interest of captains of industry without industry.
“But I think the President answered them last week; you know their campaign now is that “you must remove fuel subsidy, you must devalue the currency, you must privatize NNPC of all institutions” and the President said “I am not going to privatize NNPC, I will break it into two for effective performance,” which I think is the best for our country”
Falana further stressed the need for Buhari to cut down the cost of governance.
He further posited thus: “There’s an area that we need to develop now that the government is trying to cut cost. We have too many embassies all over the world. I got to a country in Africa recently and discover that the country has a population of about 300,000 and we have an embassy there.
“We have embassies in the 16 member state of West Africa and in all African countries. I think we have to do something about that,”he said.
