A public finance expert, Salihu Nataro, has commended the economic policies of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, saying the policies are headed in the right direction and yielding positive results.
Nataro, who is also a public sector reform advocate, however said the President must take some radical steps to reinvigorate the federal cabinet in the planned reshuffle by removing deadwood and Ministers not conversant with the workings of the Renewed Hope Agenda of his administration.
Addressing journalists in Abuja, Monday, the Kebbi-born chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) said the President needs good heads to lend a helping hand at the second half of his first term.
“The President has recorded tremendous achievements alone, without adequate complementary helping hands from his cabinet, where about 85 per cent of them do not know enough about his policy directions, but rather sitting down like dead horses in a jungle.
“Things are looking up in the area of Foreign Direct Investment due to President Tinubu’s singular international travels. I am happy that the President agreed with my suggestion for local production of military software and hardware, as well as infrastructure development which will ease the nation’s economy.
“In the area of growing businesses, the President is doing much to ensure that the country taps the untapped resources by making all the mineral deposits to be exploited in Nigeria. The idea of leaving huge allocations to state Governors to distribute the dividend of democracy is also commendable.
“But, some of the governors have refused to channel the money to areas of need and priority projects due to greed and monumental corruption, while the masses continue wallowing in poverty. The masses that blame President Tinubu for hunger do so due to lack of adequate information to rural areas about the true situation of government policies.”
He described Tinubu as a listening President and expressed the hope that the President would shed his cabinet of non-performers and replace them with modern and creative ideas to take the administration to new heights and help to market the president’s continuation in office beyond 2027.
The public finance expert commended the President of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote for recalling Tinubu’s smart economic gestures when he was Lagos State governor, which he said helped in the construction of the Dangote Refinery.
On the raging issue of Genetically Modified Organism crops, Nataro said those complaining should accommodate the leap of science instead of toeing the path of the Burkina Faso military President, Ibrahim Traore, saying that Tinubu deserves support to reshape Nigeria into a digital economy.