Hehe...The Vice President-elect, Prof. Yomi Osinbajo, on Wednesday said Nigeria’s economy is in its worst shape in history.
He put the nation’s local and
international debt profile at US$60billion with a 2015 debt serving bill
of N953.6billion, representing 21 per cent of the 2015 budget.
Osinbajo gave these statistics in his
remarks at the opening of a 2-day Policy Dialogue on the Implementation
of the Agenda for Change, which began in Abuja on Wednesday.
He
noted that an estimated 110 million, out of the nation’s over 170
million population, live in extreme poverty while the largest chunk of
the benefits of our national wealth accrues to a small percentage of the
population.
According to him, the nation’s dwindling
oil revenues has made it difficult for two thirds of Nigeria’s 36
states to pay salaries.
He said, “We are concerned that our
economy is currently in, perhaps, its worst moment in history. Local and
international debts stand at US$ 60 billion.
“Our debt servicing bill for 2015 is
N953.6 billion, 21 per cent of our budget. On account of severely
dwindled resources, over two-thirds of the states in Nigeria owe
salaries.
“Federal institutions are not in much better shape. Today, the nation borrows to fund recurrent expenditure.”
This, he explained, is against the
backdrop of a highly unequal society in which, by some reckoning, the
largest percentage of the benefits of our national wealth accrues to a
small group within our population.
Osinbajo said the manifesto of the All
Progressives Congress offers a vision of shared prosperity and
soci0-economic inclusion for all Nigerians that leaves no one behind in
the pursuit of a prosperous and fulfilling life.
According to him, the goal of the policy
dialogue is to interrogate the positions and propositions before a
wider audience and to lunch a robust public conversation on policy
directions and priorities that will help inform the incoming
administration’s approach in the next four years.
He further explained that the forum
exemplifies the sort of consultative and consensual approach to
policy-making that the APC and the new administration intend to model in
office.
The Vice President elect also declared
that sessions during the dialogue would explore a wide range of policy
priorities including the diversification of the economy in the wake of
dwindling oil revenues.
In order to achieve this, he said, the
administration intends to engender job-led growth through the
revitalisation of agriculture in pursuit of job creation and food
security, improving the regulatory frameworks in the most strategic
sphere of economic activity.
Earlier, a former Secretary of State for
Trade and Industry, Mr. Peter Mandelson, who represented former British
Prime Minister, Tony Blair, advised the incoming administration, to
take advantage of its current level of public support to take hard
decisions.
He explained that with the current state of affairs, the task ahead of the incoming administration was indeed a daunting one.
Drawing from the experiences of the
Labour Party in Britain, Mr. Peter Mandelson said, the first rule of
governance is “Be true to your word; be true to your mandate.”
He urged the Buhari-led administration
not to be afraid to take hard decisions but that it must remain mindful
of the timing of such decisions.
Mandelson also advised the
administration not to attempt to do everything at once but ensure that
things are done with proper planning along with a commitment to
delivery.
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