Nigeria Will Remain In Recession Till 2020 – Agbakoba

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Dr. Olisa Agbakoba, has said Nigeria will remain in economic recession until 2020 except the Federal Government takes hold of the banking sector and exert more

regulatory control, among other measures.Agbakoba advised the Federal Government to return the Treasury Single Account to the commercial banks and create a new supervisory agency to monitor
them, while the Central Bank of Nigeria should focus its attention on formulating monetary policies.Agbakoba spoke to newsmen in Lagos on Tuesday on what Nigeria should do to come out of recession.He said, “Give Treasury Single Account back to the banks at single digit rates and supervise the banks; I recommend a lending base of 5 per cent.“Limit the CBN to monetary policy and take away banking supervision to new prudential regulatory authority and banking ethics to new financial conduct authority.‘If banks focus on lending and not trading, money will flood the system for productive value.”Agbakoba, who maintained that Nigeria’s economy had already slid further from recession into depression, also said the Federal Government did not have what could be called an economic team at the moment.He argued, therefore, that one of the first steps that President Muhammadu Buhari should take to rescue the economy from recession was to set up an economic team comprising of experts or technocrats.He suggested that government should engage the likes of Prof. Pat Utomi and Mr. Bismarck Rewane.He stressed that the only way out of recession was for the government to pump money into the system by embarking on  developmental projects rather than adopting austerity measures.“We must spend our way out of recession,” Agbakoba said.
Punch