Ali Baba: Nigeria will be in recession for a long time

Nigeria’s economy will be in recession for quite some time, says Atunyota Alleluya Akporobomerere, a comedian popularly known as Ali Baba.

In a post on his Instagram page on Monday, 51-year-old Ali Baba said the country was not futuristic in planning and executing projects.

He blamed Nigeria’s over-reliance on crude oil for the situation the country finds itself and also went on to list areas and sectors that Nigeria could have developed, yet failed to.

The comedian said: “The economy will remain like this for a loooooooooooooong while. Because the strings that pull us into dire straits are still pulling us even much stronger. How did we get here? We were making so much from oil and neglected all other sources of revenue.

“We did not invest the revenue from oil in infrastructural development of the country. We were not futuristic in our planning either.”

“Did we increase the number of hostels in our universities to accommodate the new numbers of students? Pay teachers well?

“Did we build more roads to take care of the millions of cars and transportation needs? Did we improve the services of the police force? Did we use the money to build better hospitals? Did the new industries create more jobs? Did we improve our power supply?

“Did we have stronger and modified laws that made sure that people who broke the laws were punished adequately to discourage others? Did we tidy up our pension scheme so that people are assured that they did not need to steal to assure themselves of better retirement?

“What have we done to ensure the right people got elected? Have we developed our tourism potentials to attract foreign investors and revenues? We have failed to do all of that. Now our almighty crude prices that were our saving grace are low. The production is even nearly non-existent, thanks to militants.

“There are backlog of owed salaries, uncompleted projects, dead refineries, high unemployment and huge numbers of the unemployable. We are borrowing. Even Jesus cannot save us unless we create new sources of revenue. What do I know sef? Shebi I am an ordinary comedian? I dey look”

The comedian recently noted that supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari are on the same path taken by those who messed up Goodluck Jonathan, former president.