Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has said that Nigeria will exit its present recession in a matter of weeks.
The minister who was represented by Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Bayo Onanuga, stated this at the biennial convention of the Nigerian Guild of Editors in Lagos on Saturday
Citing the recent statement credited to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor that the recession in Nigeria would end by June ending, he said that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration had shamed doomsday prediction that the present recession in the country could lead to a depression.
He said, “There have been other pointers for the good news as well. For two consecutive months, the National Bureau of Statistics has also reported a fall in inflation rate. The exchange rate is regaining some sanity.
“As I said earlier, the worst appears to be over. We are clawing out of the woods of recession in weeks from now.
“I hope, in our various media, we shall begin to focus more on the positive developments in our economy, the growth in agriculture and mineral development, since the NBS last year, let out the secret that the Nigerian economy recorded a negative growth in the first quarter of 2016.”
He went further to say that recession was not peculiar to the country, pointing out that the United States of America (USA) had experienced 47 recessions with some landing it into depressions.
He said, “Between 1980 and 2007 alone, the American economy experienced five recessions. The last one in 2007 was caused by the subprime mortgage crisis and led to the collapse of the US housing bubble.”
He therefore called on the media to “Inform the people that the government is working hard to end the recession,” saying that such information will go a long way to give hope to the people.
He added, “After all, it is said that ‘if you keep hope alive, it will keep you alive,’”
