Former Nigerian leader, Olusegun Obasanjo, says President Bola Tinubu’s “wrongly implemented” economic policies have made the nation a laughing stock among foreign investors who would rather take their monies to other African countries.

Evaluating Mr Tinubu’s first year in office, Mr Obasanjo said the president had not managed the economy in a way that would inspire confidence and enhance trust in investors, according to a statement issued by his spokesperson, Kehinde Akinyemi, on Sunday.

He said that many Nigerians are now living in extreme poverty as a result of Mr Tinubu’s “necessary but wrongly implemented” removal of the fuel subsidy and unification of the parallel and official market foreign exchange rates,

“Today, the government has taken three decisions, two of which are necessary but wrongly implemented and have led to impoverisation of the economy and of Nigerians. These are removal of subsidy, closing the gap between black market and official rates of exchange and the third is dealing with a military coup in Niger Republic,” the former Nigerian president said in the statement.

Citing Total Energy’s recent $6 billion investment in Angola’s economy, Mr Obasanjo said it was unsettling that existing investors were fleeing Nigeria for economic safety in the arms of neighbouring African countries.

“Total Energy has gone to invest $6 billion in Angola instead of Nigeria. If the truth must be stated, the present administration has not found the right way to handle the economy to engender confidence and trust for investors to start trooping in,” Mr Obasanjo was quoted as saying at the Paul Aje Colloquium (PAC) in Abuja.

“They (foreign investors) know us more than we know ourselves. And now they are laughing at us, not taking us seriously. We have to present ourselves in such a way that we will be taken seriously,” the former Nigerian leader dropped his hottakes. “If the existing investors are disinvesting and going out of our country, how do we persuade new investors to rush in.”

He explained that the situation could be salvaged if only Mr Tinubu could change his style of leadership from “transactional” to “transformational.”

“We can be serious if we choose to be but we need to change from transactional leadership in government to transformational and genuine servant leadership.”