The Tinubu Media Support Group (TMSG), has described former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s recommendation of measures introduced by Argentina’s President, Javier Milei, for Nigeria as unrealistic.
Abubakar had in a statement on Sunday, said that Nigeria should take a lesson from how the president of Argentina turned around the economy of his country.
Reacting to this, the TMSG Chairman, Jesutega Onokpasa, in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday, said that Abubakar’s position showed that he did not have a proper understanding of the Argentina situation, before and after Milei assumed office in December 2023.
“We know that the Argentina president inherited an economy in a worse situation than what President Bola Tinubu met in Nigeria.
” We wondered what the former vice president found so exciting about Milei’s reforms that he considered worth emulating.”
He said Abubakar alluded to a report by Reuters to back his conviction, adding that it was necessary to remind him that he had never deemed it necessary to praise Tinubu.
This, according to him, should be on the basis of the constant positive assessment of the Tinubu administration’s policies by the same international media outfit.
He said that since Milei assumed office in December, poverty in Argentina had risen toward 60 per cent which is the highest in 20 years.
This, he said, had led to increased daily protests on the streets after a series of reforms, including a 50 per cent devaluation of the peso.
“Did he also forget that President Milei on assuming office, said he will introduce what he described as shock therapy that will induce short term pains but long term gains?
“We are surprised that the President of Nigeria, which is recording more favourable numbers than Argentina is not getting a benefit of the doubt.
He added that President Tinubu also promised long term benefits after announcing an end to fuel subsidy, the day he was sworn into office.
“Abubakar was wrong when he wrote on his X platform that Nigeria and Argentina ‘had closed the last quarter of the year 2023 on a similar path of economic downturn, ” he said.
He faulted Abubakar’s claim, adding that while Nigeria’s Quarter four figures showed a 3.46 per cent growth, higher than the 2.54 per cent of the third quarter of 2023, that of Argentina contracted by 19.4 per cent.
“Besides, inflation in Nigeria stood at 29.90 per cent in January but that of Argentina is 254 per cent higher than that of Venezuela.”
He said that while his group was not dismissive of Millei’s ‘shock therapy’ in the context of the situation in that country, it should be noted that Argentines are still waiting to see how it would work.
He urged Nigerians to continue to trust in President Tinubu’s ability to turn things around in the long run.