Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, says the Late President Muhammadu Buhari devalued the naira through reckless monetary policies, including the printing of N22.7 trillion as “ways and means.”
Dogara gave his damming verdict on Buhari, Nigerian President from 2015 to 2023 in a video clip this week.’
According to Dogara, Buhari’s economic decisions plunged Nigeria into its current financial crisis.
Bauchi State-born Dogara said President Bola Ahmed Tinubu inherited a “wrecked” economy made worse by Buhari’s indiscriminate printing of trillions of naira, the controversial dual exchange rate regime, and mortgaging of crude oil sales for foreign loans.
“By the time President Tinubu took office, the economic debris of this nation had become too conspicuous to be ignored,” Dogara said.
“N22.7 trillion; we are all journalists here, we know this had been printed and injected into the economy in the name of ways and means, thereby destroying the value of the naira in our pockets.”
The former Speaker accused the Buhari administration of institutionalising economic sabotage by creating a dual foreign exchange system that favoured a select few.
“The dual exchange rate meant that some anointed people were making hundreds of millions of naira of forex allocations from the CBN without producing any goods or offering any services whatsoever,” he added.
Dogara further condemned the practice of tying crude oil sales to foreign loans through “forward sales” arrangements, describing the measure as fraudulent and unsustainable.
“Tying our crude sales to foreign loans in the name of forward sales of crude was fast becoming the order of the day. Some of the foreign loans had been procured in order to help strengthen the value of the naira, a measure that could only be sustained by what experts call voodoo economics,” he said.
Buhari unveiled the new notes before the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting at the State House, Abuja, in November 2022.
