NEWS: NIGERIA - Nigeria’ll smile soon – Lai Mohammed, laments looting under Jonatha's Govt

MINISTER of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, yesterday assured Nigerians that there would be light at the end of the tunnel. He said the 2016 national budget would alleviate the hardship being experienced now. This, he noted, was brought about by the sleaze and looting in the Jonathan administration.

The minister was responding to a comment by the Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu who complained that Nigerians are suffering as a result of Naira depreciation. He said, companies would collapse in the next six month.

Alhaji Mohammed said the poor state of the economy, especially the depreciation of the Naira is the direct consequence of the incomprehensible mismanagement of the economy and the mindless looting of the national treasury under the Jonathan ad­ministration, rather than any so-called mismanagement by the Buhari’s government.

“If there was still any honour left among thieves, there is no way the leaders of a party under whose watch the economy suffered a monumental mismanagement and the Central

Bank was turned to the ATM or piggy bank of a few people will have the temerity to insult a government that is working hard to turn things around or the citizens who are bearing the brunt of such mismanagement,’’ the Minister of Information and Culture, Al­haji Lai Mohammed, said in a statement on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Ekweremadu has denied claims that Constitution Review Committee in the Seventh National Assembly pocketed N8 billion budgeted for the review of the 1999 Constitution.

Ekweremadu’s statement is a rejoinder to claims made by an online newspaper that he and former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Emeka Ihedioha, alleg­edly siphoned the huge sums meant for the exercise.

According to the Deputy Senate President, who spoke through his media adviser, Mr. Uche Anichukwu, he said the recent online publication is part of a desperate move to dent his image.

Ekweremadu said: “This report did not come to us as a surprise. It could be recalled that the office, in a statement dated September 29, 2015, had warned of “some clandestine efforts by desperate political elements to publish false and defamatory information against the office and person of the Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Ike Ekwer­emadu”.

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