National
IMF, World Bank Policies Are Anti-People -Jega
By Stephen Asaba-ase
The former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Attahiru Jega, has admonished the Nigerian government not to heed to the offers by the Bretton Woods institutions – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, IMF.
Meanwhile, Prof. Jega gave this admonition while speaking at the ongoing 2024 Annual Directors Conference Good Governance as a Catalyst for Economic Recovery, Growth, and Development’, put together by the Chartered Institute of Directors of Nigeria.
He also emphasized that, it is good and imperative to engage institutions and stakeholders of the government to carefully reform the Countries economy by leadership recruitment process, adding that the major problems bedeviling Nigeria is unprepared leadership.
The World Bank/IMF have been accused of bad economic policies to Nigerian President, especially the PMB Subsidy Removal, as well as the floating of the naira which have produced negative inflationary reaction on the economy
The hardship in the country has been blamed on the ‘anti-people’ policies suggested by the World Bank and IMF.
But the IMF’s African Region Director, Abebe Selassie, had, at a briefing on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Washington DC, US, claimed that the organisation did not advise Tinubu to remove fuel subsidy.
“The decision a local in texture. It was President Tinubu’s decision. We don’t have good policies in Nigeria. Our role is limited to regular negotiation, as we have with other nations like Japan or the UK,” he said.
Jega advised Nigerians to pay serious attention to nurturing and entrenching democratic governance, rather than merely good governance, as being promoted by the World Bank
“This is the only way to place Nigeria on a sustainable trajectory of what I call ‘People-oriented development processes.’
Jega also noted that while it is good to patronize World Bank and the IMF but, “we should not swallow hook, line, and sinker what they bring to us”.
“We must be very careful in terms of what measures they have suggested to us because if we don’t do that we may advertently or inadvertently fall into greater medium and longer-term problems even if we think we are seeing short-term benefits from that kind of engagement,” he stressed.