Former Special Assistant to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, Reno Omokri, has slammed the Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, describing his viral television interview as “the least intelligent [three] minutes of broadcast history.”
This Is Probably The Least Intelligent Three Minutes of Television In Nigeria’s Broadcasting History! pic.twitter.com/1HPKTB4mWl
— Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) October 12, 2024
Arise TV Has Shown Us Why Peter Obi Only Got a Second Class Lower In Philosophy pic.twitter.com/EabX67Exh7
— Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) October 12, 2024
Obi, in the viral interview with ARISE NEWS The Morning Show, said, “nobody floats a currency without having adequate supply. Without supply, there will be pressures and criminality in the exchange rate regime.
“We should have worked on eliminating the pressures and criminality because the strong unmet demands put the naira under pressure and a bit over-valued.
“So, what we should have done is to devalue the currency. We were at four hundred and something before now, a devaluation would have put us at six hundred and something, and that would have been it.”
When asked whether he’ll devalue the currency, Obi replied, “That’s what I would have done. I would devalue the currency.”
“The naira was under pressure and a bit overvalued; everybody knew that. So, what he would have done was to devalue the currency. We were at N412 before now.
“Devaluation to about N600 or thereabout will have been it, while trying to manage the supply by making sure that we deal with issues. What controls your exchange rate? It’s a simple thing, it’s your reserve. And what controls your reserve is your export. You have avenues and things that you will have exported, you’re supposed to export from your oil to other minerals to everything.”
He noted that the new leadership should have worked on eliminating the criminality and excesses in our exchange rate market before going about floating the currency.
He added that currency float should be a carefully thought-out process and not something that is announced haphazardly.
Reacting to this viral interview, Omokri, a prominent social media personality known for his defence of President Bola Tinubu, stated that the interview, which he referred to as “the least intelligent five minutes of broadcast history in Nigeria’s television history,” was conducted “two days ago.”
However, The Guardian can confirm that the interview took place a year ago, on October 2, 2023.
Omokri argued that Obi’s approach would have borrowed money to prop up the value of the naira, exacerbate Nigeria’s economic woes, inherited from the Buhari administration, which allegedly borrowed excessively and left the country almost insolvent.
He noted JP Morgan’s 2022 report revealing the Buhari administration’s foreign reserve lies and unauthorised “ways and means debt” of 30 trillion naira.”
Omokri stated that with the interview, he knew why Obi graduated with a second-class lower in philosophy from the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, Enugu State, where he studied philosophy until his graduation in 1984.
He added that Obi does not understand the situation at hand, and his supporters, popularly referred to as Obidient do not mean well for Nigeria, claiming that Obidient were trying to force Obi on Nigeria.
Omokri describes Obi as a man who did not have the mental capacity to even understand the problems that we are facing or to even think about a solution.
He stated, “How would you have handled it better? And he says I would have been borrowing money. I mean, it’s almost unheard of now. We know why this man had a second-class lower in philosophy. It’s coming out, you know what is in him is coming out? Look, if we keep on borrowing more money to defend the Naira, how are we going to prop up the Naira? When already by the time Buhari left, we were already spending about 98% of our revenue in debt servicing. You can see that this man does not understand the situation at hand, and his support does not mean well, for Nigeria, they were trying to force on Nigeria, a man who did not have the mental capacity to even understand the problems that we are facing or to even think about a solution.
Omokri added, “I mean, it is just terrible because if we are to get out of this situation, then we’ve got to do certain things, and these things that we’re going to do are going to be very difficult things. One of the things that we need to do is to float the narrow because if we continue to borrow to defend the narrow, then we’re not going to be able to fund our budget because we are going to be spending all our revenue in paying debts. And this is not debt that this administration took, this is debt that this previous administration took. Now I’m gonna give you some facts, and you need to fact-check me on this.
The Guardian has verified that Obi did not explicitly state he would borrow money to defend the naira but did affirm that borrowing could stabilise the currency while addressing export issues and criminality.
When the interviewer asked Obi if he would have borrowed to defend the currency, Obi responded, “Yes, you can do that. You are not borrowing just to defend the currency temporarily but to stabilise the currency while you work aggressively on your export and manage the criminality side of it.”
