Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has raised the alarm over President Mohammadu Buhari’s scheduled trip to China saying president was visiting the Asian country borrow $2 billion as part of the N1.84 trillion programmed to be borrowed to finance the 2016 Budget.
The governor, who said the 2016 budget was not a reflection of the present economic reality in the country, described the move as an attempt to mortgage the future of Nigeria and its people.
In a release issued on Friday by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Fayose said he was alerting Nigerians of the danger in the federal government’s plan to fund the 2016 budget with loan, adding that: “Tomorrow, it will be said of me that I did not keep silent when Nigeria was being mortgaged to unnecessary debt.
“By the time they borrow N1.84 trillion to fund their N6.06 billion budget; I wonder how Nigeria will survive in 2017 when the Federal Government will be servicing debt with about 50 percent of its budget.
“In elementary economics, you don’t propose to spend more when your income reduces and I still can’t understand this Buharinomics in which Nigeria is going to spend N6.06 billion with crude oil bench mark of $38 per barrel when the country budget was N4.5 trillion in 2015 when crude oil bench mark was $53 per barrel.
“If your income was N200, 000 per month last year and your expenditure was N195, 000 per month; does it make any economic sense for you to propose to spend N300, 000 per month this year that your income has reduced to N120, 000?
“With the proposed N1.84 trillion borrowing, $2 billion of which President Buhari is already going to borrow in China, the nation may soon be going the way of Greece because Nigeria will be borrowing N5 billion per day for the next 365 days.
“Only President Buhari can explain to Nigerians what manner of Economic theory encourages borrowing of N1.84 trillion to fund a N6 trillion budget. As for me, it is nothing but a voodoo economic theory and Nigerians must take note that the income that should accrue to them in five years’ time is about to be spent in one year by the Buhari’s APC government,” the governor said.
He posited that since the President claimed to have recovered and still recovering trillions of Naira looted from the treasury and over N3 trillion saved from the Treasury Single Account (TSA), the 2016 budget should be funded with the recovered fund.
