Covid-19 Caused Recession – President Buhari Says

The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, has blamed the country’s current state of recession on the COVID-19 pandemic.

The National Bureau of Statistics on Saturday, November 21, released its Gross domestic product (GDP) numbers which showed clearly that the nation recorded a contraction of 3.62 percent in the third quarter of 2020.

This is the second consecutive quarterly GDP decline since the last recession of 2016. The cumulative GDP for the first nine months of 2020, therefore, stood at -2.48 percent.

The last time Nigeria recorded such worst decline of its economy was in 1987, when GDP declined by 10.8 percent.

President Buhari while declaring open the 26th Nigerian Economic Summit with the theme: “Building Partnerships for Resilience’’, made the assertion on the cause for the recent recession.

READ ALSO: FIFA Bans CAF Chief, Ahmad For 5 Years 

The President, who was represented by Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo, said:

“We can all recall that during the lockdown, farming did not take place, businesses were closed; schools were closed as were hotels and restaurants.

“Also, airlines stopped flying, while inter-state commerce was disrupted.

“The economy only began to recover when these activities resumed and if we are able to sustain the nearly three percentage point increase from the second quarter decline of minus 6.1 per cent, the performance in the fourth quarter could take us into positive territory.” Follow us on Instagram @sofovilla | Follow us on Twitter @sofovilla | Like our page on Facebook via @sofovillamedia