ICAN Raises Concern over FG’s Inconsistent Policies, Implementation Strategies

Gilbert Ekugbe

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) has expressed worry over what it termed the present administration’s inadequate policies and implementation mechanisms.

The 59th president of the Institute, Innocent Okwuosa, who spoke at a press briefing yesterday, stated that the Tinubu administration has been wrong in policy implementation, calling on the government to put a human face to some of the inconsistent policies that have been churned out over the past one year.

Fielding questions from journalists about President Tinubu’s first year in office, he said the President has done very well in churning out economic policies, but lamented that these policies were still being challenged by lack of effective implementation.

In his words, “They have been very wrong in implementation and you can see that we still have policy inadequacies.

“For instance, the fuel subsidy removal that was announced the first day in office, we expected that subsequently, the government should have taken some action to ameliorate the suffering of the masses.

“The hike on electricity tariffs also came at a time when the masses are suffering from the effects of exchange rate and fuel subsidy. We expected that the implementation should have been done with a human face to those policies.”

He, however, urged the federal government to refer back to the tenets of some of the agencies for accountability and transparency created by President Olusegun Obasanjo ‘s regime to check against bad behaviour in public offices

“The President has done very well in churning out economic policies and there is a very long list of what the President has done in terms of those policies, but there have been some implementation challenges and neglect in some areas,” he added.

“Just because we are accountants and we always focus on accountability, I expect this government to progress on what Obasanjo has done especially when the President himself is an accountant so that we can hold people accountable for what they do, because we see a situation where there are no consequences for bad behaviour and I think this is an aspect the government needs to pay much attention to,” he advised.

“There have been inconsistencies in policies, policy reversals and when you begin to have policy reversals it is an indication that there is no consistency in government. It could also mean that there were no consultations before those policies were churned out.

“One other area is the budget that were based on some assumptions that no longer hold, for instance, there is a N800 to the dollar exchange rate in the budget, but today dollar is about N1500 to the dollar and as per the oil production which was put at 1.8 million barrel per day, so we are saying that the government should revisit the budget and cut down on expenses on the cost of running the government,” he averred.