Politics Today

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Chukwuma Soludo disagreed yesterday on the efficacy of Budget 2016 to tackle the economic challenges facing the country.

They spoke in Abuja at the Daily Trust Dialogue with the theme: 50 years since 1966: Is Nigeria rising?

 Other speakers at the event are Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, a former Chief of Defence Staff and a scholar; Dr. Mairo Mandara.

Osinbajo said he and President Muhammadu Buhari are prepared to serve with their integrity intact than any desire to make money in government.

He admitted that the nation is passing through a critical and interesting period, but that they remain committed to taking the nation to the next level of social, political and economic development.

Soludo said among others that the 2016 budget represented a missed opportunity for the government to set new standards for a post-oil economy. He urged the government to take bold steps to make changes happen.

Soludo expressed fears for the nation by 2050, saying Nigeria has 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 budget was designed for sharing and consumption regarding the nation’s oil wealth and not necessarily for the development of the country’s dysfunctional system.

He expressed regret that the nation had been taking 10 steps forward and 11 steps backward, urging 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 that it depends largely on the choices made by the leadership. He expected this year’s budget to be more innovative to defeat our old, bad ideas.

He said the budget had historic 37 per cent deficit to make recurrent expenditure higher than total revenue, pointing out that it was not the way to go for a government with change as its mantra.

“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 party is over, following the fall in the price of crude oil globally.

He said the government needs a coherent economic plan as well as the right political architecture, stressing that anything less than this would mean that the leaders are building on a quicksand.

Soludo said 35 per cent of Nigeria’s land is 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 said there would be a lot of migration by 2050 if oil and gas,agriculture and solid minerals have limited impacts on employment and urged the federal government to begin to take steps to improve manufacturing and skill acquisition for Nigerians.

Soludo added that Nigerians need skills and where to use them and praised the administration for the priliminary steps it has taken to dismantle some of the things that strangulate the economy in the past few months.

But Osinbajo said the Buhari administration is determined to fix the  justice system to end impunity and corruption.

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.”

The Vice President said far from being a budget based on compassion the 2016 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 these people, and if we don’t do it, we are only postponing the doomsday. The planned recruitment of 500,000 teachers would 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 transfer, small and medium scale enterprises, agriculture, especially erosion and desertification, use of improved seedlings and private sector involvement are all captured in the budget for the country’s growth.

The Vice President also stated that the Federal Government was not by-passing manufacturing as some of the steps it would take would boost the sector, irrespective of the fact that its WTO agreements would be affected. Nigeria, he said, has no choice but to take such step.

Osinbajo said the Federal Government decided to increase the coverage of VAT from 20 percent 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.

Nation