Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has blamed the current economic recession on the country’s over-dependence on oil.
Speaking in Kwara State on Tuesday, the Minister said the prevailing economic situation was not about trading blames, stressing that “those who understand knew that this recession was bound to happen in such circumstance.”
Mohammed explained that the downturn in global price of oil exposed the country’s faulty economic policy, with oil accounting for over 60 per cent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP.
According to the Minister, “We have a very defective economic structure, which depended largely on a single platform of crude and fuel.
“Crude oil accounts for between eight and 12 per cent of our GDP and another 53 per cent of the GDP which we call non-oil, unfortunately also depend on the same oil.
“When the price of oil now crashes in the international market, definitely you are bound to have this kind of shock in the economy.”
Mohammed noted that the nation’s economic growth between 2010 and 2014, was only fueled by consumption, reason it short-lived.
“The growth was not fueled by production or fueled by investment, and that explains why it was short-lived,” he said.
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