Former Governor of the Central
Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof. Charles Soludo, has stated that the 2016 budget
presented by President Muhammadu Buhari failed to make a departure from the
budgets of the past administration, noting that it was almost identical to the
one presented by former President Goodluck Jonathan.
According to Soludo, the present
budget was a carbon copy of the one by Jonathan’s government, adding,
“Defeating old bad ideas could be better that initiating new ones.”
He said this while speaking at
the 13th Daily Trust Dialogue in Abuja yesterday.
Soludo expressed concern over
where the nation would be by 2050, saying Nigeria had underperformed despite
earning over one trillion dollars from oil over the years.
He regretted that the money earned
from oil has only kept the looting elite united and organised while the nation
is now the fifth among states classified as failed states.
He said the Nigeria constitution
was designed for sharing and consumption regarding the nations oil wealth and
not necessarily for the development of the country’s dysfunctional system.
He regretted that the nation has
been taking ten steps forward and eleven steps backward and urged the leaders
to rise to the challenge posed by the fact that the period of oil boom is over.
Soludo said Nigeria has the
potential to rise, but depended largely on the choices made by the leadership,
arguing that he expected the 2016 budget to be more innovative to defeat our
old bad ideas.
He said the budget had a historic
37 per cent deficit to make recurrent expenditure higher than total revenue,
pointing out that it is not the way to go for a government with “change as its
mantra”.
“The present budget is more of
the same to the previous ones. Mr. Vice President (Prof. Yemi Osinbajo), if you
scale your budget on the scale of GDP, it is almost the same with the previous
government.
“It has a historic 37 per cent
deficit as we never had it before. The truth is that you are borrowing 37 per
cent with only 30 per cent allocated to capital projects.
“To craft the new agenda, we must
defeat the old agenda. We cannot make progress in the country with the tools
and agenda of the old,” Soludo said,
adding that the APC-led government was over-following the fall in the price of
crude oil globally.
He said the present
administration needed to evolve a coherent economic plan and agenda as well as
the right political architecture, stressing that anything less than this would
mean that the leaders are building on a quicksand.
He regretted that 35 per cent of
Nigeria land was already under threat of desertification which would affect
agriculture, stressing that 11 to 12 states in the same zone are facing the
problem of Boko Haram.
He warned that there would be
unchecked migration by 2050 if oil and gas, agriculture, and solid minerals
have limited impact on employment and urged the federal government to begin to
take steps to improve manufacturing and skills acquisition for Nigerians.
He added that Nigerians needed
skills and where to use them and praised the administration for the preliminary
steps it has taken to dismantle some of the things that strangulated the
economy in the past few months.
Professor Soludo who was the last
speaker at the event, said the 2016 budget represented a missed opportunity for
the government to set new standards for a post-oil economy, urging the
government to take bold and audacious steps to make changes happen.
In his response, Vice-President
Yemi Osinbajo said that President Muhammadu Buhari and himself were prepared to
serve with their integrity intact than any desire to make money in government.
He admitted that the nation was
passing through a critical and interesting period, but that the President and
himself remain committed to take the nation to the next level of social,
political and economic development.
Osinbajo, who insisted on staying
until the key note speakers made their remarks, said the present administration
was taking a holistic approach in tackling the nation’s problems, stressing
that Buhari and himself had a duty to put in their best and deliver a nation
with the capacity to grow and develop.
According to him the present
administration was determined to fix the nation’s justice system to end
impunity and corruption, stressing that as things are today, both the rich and
the poor escape justice in the country.
He said: “Everybody escapes
justice in Nigeria, whether it is the poor or the rich. As of today, we have
12,000 convicted persons in our various prisons across the country in a country
of 170 million people, the United States of America with a population of 300
million people have 2.2 million convicted persons in various prisons. With this
figure, it is either Nigerians are peace loving or something is wrong with our
system.”
On Soludo’s assessment of the
2016 budget, Osinbajo said far from being a budget based on compassion, as
alluded by former CBN governor, the budget was designed to address the plight
of over 120 million Nigerians who have been alienated from governance and
living below poverty level.
“The budget is about the economic
survival of this people, and if we don’t do it, we are only postponing the
dooms day. The planned recruitment of 500,000 teachers will fill a huge gap in
our education system, it would put people to work and further improve our
education system,” the vice-president said.
He said technical and vocational
education, conditional cash transfers,emphasis on small and medium scale enterprises,
agriculture, especially the issues of erosion and desertification, the use of
improved seedlings, and attracting private sector involvement, were all captured
in the budget for the betterment of the country.
The vice-president also stated
that the federal government was not by-passing manufacturing as some of the
step it would take would boost activities in the sector irrespective of the
fact that its WTO agreements would be affected but that Nigeria had no choice
but to take such step.
He said the federal government
decided to increase the coverage of VAT from the current 20 per cent of the
economy rather than increase its rate to 10 per cent, stressing that regardless
of the size of the budget, the good thing is that it would engender growth and
development.
Osinbajo also said that there was
the need for elite consensus to decide the future of the country, regretting
that it was inconceivable that Nigeria’s best minds would now resort to
representing little zones within their states at a time Nigeria is an
attractive proposition in the world because of its size.
Others who spoke included General
Martin Luther Agwai (rtd) and Dr. Mairo Mandara.
In her remarks, Mandara held the
audience spellbound when she insisted that Nigeria needs a self-definition of
her own political identity that would address the issues of social justice,
inequality, women status, health, education and poverty.
She urged the nation’s leaders to
lead by example and place more emphasis on merit rather than surround
themselves only with people from their ethnic background at the detriment of
quality service and commitment to the growth and development of Nigeria.
Also, General Agwai averred that
Nigeria was not making progress in terms of development since it could not
match its population growth of 175 million people and other potentials with
qualitative development in education, transportation, agriculture, health,
political stability, good governance and security.
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