President Muhammadu Buhari says he excluded private sector
players from his administration’s economic management team in order to
prevent them from steering government policies to suit their own “narrow
interests.”
In his response to those accusing him of not
having an economic management team, Buhari said he already had one
headed by his deputy, Professor Yemi Osinbajo.
The Senior
Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Mr
Laolu Akande, quoted Buhari as saying this in an exclusive interview in
The Interview magazine.
Akande made the excerpts from the interview available to State House
correspondents yesterday.
The president said while his
government would still listen to everyone, it was averse to making
private sector individuals members of the National Economic Management
Team (NEMT).
“We will listen to everybody, but we are
averse to economic teams whose private sector members frequently steer
government policy to suit their own narrow interests rather than the
over-all national interest,” he said.
Asked if he thought
he needed an economic management having been criticised for not having
one, Buhari responded: “What do they mean by team? The vice president
heads our economic management team.
“You have a finance minister, a budget and planning minister, a minister
for industry, trade and investments, a governor of the Central Bank, a
national economic adviser and others. Yet, some still ask for a team. I
don’t know how they define the word team,” he added.
The
vice president’s spokesman recalled that the Presidency had disclosed
several times that an economic management team existed and met at least
once a week.
He said the team played a leading role in the budgeting process and
designed the strategic implementation document once the fiscal document
was passed and signed into law.
He said though the Buhari
administration was averse to interested private sector members, its
economic team regularly consulted with different representatives of the
private sector and other stakeholders.
Buhari was also
quoted as unveiling his wish list in the interview thus: “One, we will
truly change the way we do things in Nigeria, therein lies the future of
our country as a great entity. Two, a fully diversified Nigerian
economy no longer dependent on oil only, three, a Nigeria where every
Naira that comes into the treasury is used for the good of the people,
particularly the ordinary people.”