The former Edo State governor, Adams Oshiomhole, said on Tuesday President Bola Tinubu’s administration inherited an economy in “terrible shape.”
Oshiomhole, who stated this in a chat with State House correspondents after a meeting with Vice President Kashim Shettima in Abuja, urged Nigerians to give the president time to fix the economy.
He stressed that there was no quick fix to the country’s economic challenges.
The president had since May 29 introduced a number of measures, including the unification of the exchange rate and fuel subsidy removal in a bid to stabilize the Naira and corruption in the petrol supply chain respectively.
Oshiomhole said: “The issues of the economy are a work in progress. There is no quick fix. The government inherited a terrible economic situation. Everybody knows it.
“The government inherited an economy in which our total national revenue was barely enough to service our debt burden.
“Nothing can be worse. But they came determined that they will have to do business unusual, to arrest the drift, stabilise the economy and then begin to move forward.
“Some painful decisions are necessary. It is like any of us that has been unfortunate to have an ailment that requires surgery.
“If you want to pretend, you can be applying Vaseline, perfumes, creams and wear babariga to cover all the manifestations of that disease.
“But a trained doctor that believes in the ethics of medicine will tell you that you need surgery.”
The Edo North senator expressed optimism that the current administration would turn around the nation’s economy for the good of Nigerians.