To address the rising inflation in the country, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been advised to immediately set up a pricing board that would check prices of food items.
Accord Party former Governorship candidate in Oyo State, Hon. Saheed Ajadi said there should be punitive measures for marketers inflating prices in the market.
In a chat with newsmen in Lagos, the politician-cum Accountant said the government needs to checkmate inflation which currently stands at 34 per cent according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), saying the situation is worsening the cost of living crisis.
“Whoever is buying tomatoes at N3000 and selling at N25000 at Mile 12 Market must be arrested,” he said, saying the economy cannot be run with deregulation.
“You can’t deregulate everything and succeed. There must be price control or else you are creating a quagmire for the economy.
“Everybody trading today is part of Nigeria’s problem. There’s nobody monitoring prices in Nigeria. Government is just putting structures in place! We need a pricing structure. We need Nigeria to be patriotic to ourselves,” he stated.
He added that the pricing board must consist of men and women with integrity, saying a strategy must be devised to make it work.
Ajadi who commended the actions so far taken by President Tinubu since he assumed office noted that the President inherited a country that was almost collapsing economically.
He stated that Nigeria has been on what he called, “rent economy” since 1999, saying privatisation worsened the plight of the country.
“Privatisation is the worst thing that has ever happened to us. You can’t sell your properties that have values and expect to have a strong economy.
“I’m an accountant. They should tell us why they sold our properties in the name of privatization,” he said.
The Accord chieftain noted that Tinubu would not perform miracles, saying the removal of subsidy from petroleum is a bold step towards resetting the economy.
On the planned protest against the government, he urged the youths of Nigeria to shun the protest, saying it was a ploy to truncate their future, advising the youths to support the policies of the present administration.
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