Nigeria Had Its Best Economy Under Obasanjo – El Rufai

Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president of Nigeria, was cited as having had the greatest performance in terms of economic growth, job creation, and inflation rate by former governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State.

As the first leader of the fourth republic to be democratically elected, Obasanjo led Nigeria from 1999 to 2007.

The second term of Obasanjo, which lasted from 2003 to 2007, according to El-Rufai, a minister in Obasanjo’s cabinet, was prosperous for the economy of Nigeria.

Rufai claimed that at the time, “proper integrated planning” was resumed in Nigeria and “we also got lucky.”

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“We have a planning commission in Nigeria but it has not been as effective,” El-Rufai said on Friday, September 15 during a session at the Africa In the World conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

“If you look at Nigeria’s economic trajectory, the most successful four to five-year period of economic growth, job creation, and reduced inflation was the period of the second term of President Obasanjo in 2003 to 2007, when for the first time, the country went back into proper integrated planning and we also got lucky,” he said.

“Oil prices began to rise but we did not waste the windfall because we had planned. We had an excess crude account (ECA) that was based on a fiscal rule that any surpluses above a certain benchmark price of crude oil go to that savings account.

“And with that, we were able to get rid of all our foreign debt.”

El-Rufai said Nigeria’s fiscal strength was at its best in 2007, such that when the global financial crisis took place in 2008, “Nigeria did not feel anything”.

“Nothing was felt in Nigeria because Nigeria had a big savings account; we had huge reserves and we were able to absorb the shock without any internal problems unlike most countries,” he said.