Adams Oshiomhole, the senator representing Edo North, has blamed the naira collapse on the reckless printing of currency by former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
“To understand the root cause of the present cost of living and the exchange rate regime, you must trace it and locate it in terms of the excessive amount of banknotes through so-called ways and means which the past government created and which this government has eliminated,” Mr Oshiomhole said.
Mr Oshiomhole, who was chairman of the APC for two years during Mr Buhari’s administration, said this at the Progressive Governors Forum’s meeting and interactive session in Benin City, Edo State, on Saturday.
The senator likened reckless naira printing under the former president’s watch to what happened during the regime of former Ugandan President Idi Amin.
“We are coming from a country that was almost like Zimbabwe or Idi Amin’s Uganda, where he asked the Central Bank governor ‘, Go and print more money for us to share to the people’. And the governor said, ‘if we print more money, Uganda currency will be like a sheet of paper,” Mr Oshiomhole said.
Mr Oshiomhole lamented the printing of over N30 trillion by the Buhari-led regime under the guise of Ways and Means, saying the administration had printed money to distribute to the people.
“This is what the immediate past CBN governor was doing. In the Senate, we have the record that they printed over ₦31 trillion, which they called Ways and Means. You know, when the government wants to deceive people, they use jargon,” Mr Oshiomhole said.
He added, “They called it Ways and Means, but I can tell you what it means: it means a situation in which the government prints banknotes, not based on what we have earned or any resources, just print banknotes to go and share to the people to meet their money illusion. It is the result of that excessive printing of banknotes that led to the collapse of the naira.”
Mr Oshiomhole’s admission of reckless printing of naira under Mr Buhari’s watch comes barely two years after the former president left office.
President Bola Tinubu assumed office on May 29, 2023, announcing the immediate removal of fuel subsidy and later exchange rate unification.
The twin policies have seen Nigerians suffer an unprecedented cost of living crisis and the naira collapse.
With inflation at 23.7 per cent, a drop from 34 per cent after rebasing the economy under Mr Tinubu, Nigeria recorded the largest increase in acute food insecurity globally in 2024, according to the 2025 Global Report on Food Crises published by the Global Network Against Food Crises in collaboration with the Food Security Information Network and UNICEF.
The International Monetary Fund reported that poverty and food insecurity remained high under Mr Tinubu.
The World Bank’s Africa Pulse report of April 2025 also stated that Nigeria, under Mr Tinubu, has the highest number of extremely poor people globally, warning that more Nigerians will be plunged into poverty by 2027.