Mr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) is a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). Agbakoba, in this interview, speaks on the state of the nation.

By Ikenna Asomba

President Muhammadu Buhari has spent one year in office. Three months ago, you warned that Nigeria was sliding into recession. Do you maintain that stance?

Yes, about three months ago, I said Nigeria was sliding into recession, because a recession is two quarterly negative growths. So, now that the politically incorrect word – recession – has finally been said by the Central Bank of Nigeria and National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, let me say that we are not in recession, but in depression.

Nigeria has recorded five consecutive quarterly growths up to 2016 first quarter (Q1), which showed a negative balance. That is a depression. Critically speaking, nobody is making profit.

We calculate the growth rate by Gross Domestic Product divided by the population, thus goods and services produced are divided by the population. The current growth rate for 2016 Q1 according to the NBS is 0.34. The last, which was 2015 Q4, was 2.11. So, we are now at a depression stage. And if you know what the critical index is, you find out that things are really bad. The Foreign Direct Investment, FDI, is zero, the stock market is down, petroleum prices are up. No good news.

However, in appraising the one year in office of President Buhari, we must acknowledge the crisis of the old order and the hope of change. The path of the old order remains that things were very difficult, there was high corruption, there was insecurity, we had the Boko Haram menace among others. The pertinent question you then ask is, how has President Buhari handled them?

In the beginning of this administration, I was cautiously positive but right now I am cautiously negative. But I am waiting to see what will happen. In all fairness to President Buhari, he has been challenged by the unenvisaged crisis of governance he found- a technically insolvent country, bailouts and many of those things which meant he was bugged down and couldn’t get into governance.

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