The Presidential Candidate of the Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party, Mr. Tope Fasua, has backed Senate President Bukola Saraki’s description of the 2019 budget, presented by President Muhammadu Buhari, as a hopeless document.
In an exclusive interview with our correspondent, Fasua claimed that there was absolutely nothing in the budget for poor people and the majority of Nigerians, indicating also that the President had destroyed the Nigerian economy by putting the wrong pegs in the wrong holes.
According to him, the budget has been designed to continue with the waste and the benefits of office for a few people.
He said, “Those who find themselves in positions, the appointees, the political leaders, as well as the top civil servants, are the only ones who can benefit from that budget. We have always been on this case that we should not be doing anything less than N16 trillion in Nigeria by way of budget because of several angles. Number one, I look at the budget per capita around the world, Nigeria has, perhaps, the second lowest, which is just a little bit better than that of Democratic Republic of Congo.
“I look at Budget as a percentage of the GDP, Nigeria has the lowest in the world; meaning that we have a big GDP, so to speak, but we are budgeting for our people as if they are ants. So, if you look at the components of this N8.83 trillion budget, even debt servicing is taking 35 per cent where we cannot find 30 per cent for capital projects. The economy is broken, if Nigerians want it to be like this and they want more of this, then we deserve what we get.”
Corroborating the PDP Presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on his assertion that the Nigerian economy was in a bad shape because there was no economist in Buhari’s cabinet, he said, “It is part of the problems. I am an economist but certainly there is no economist in the cabinet. A lawyer is running your budget and planning a ministry. The woman in charge of Finance, I don’t know what she studied but she is not an economist. She is an Accountant under ANAN. You can see she is not strong. So, we have a lot of these people all over the place. A lawyer is running your power ministry, works ministry, your housing ministry. Now, let me say what it takes to be an economist. It is not only those who went to the school to study Economics that can be economists. It is about the way you think. And there are many of those who went to school to study Economics to PhD level who are not economists, because Economics is about the way you think. And an economist thinks for everybody and includes every variable.”
Fasua called on Buhari to resign even before the elections, saying that the conduct of the legislators during his budget presentation was a show of total lack of confidence in him, which never happened even under former President Goodluck Jonathan.
“In my view, Buhari should resign before the election, because the statement on the economy is an indictment on him. That was why when he was presenting the budget, they were booing him. It never happened before even under Jonathan; that the president would be presenting the budget and the legislators would be saying you are lying (iro lo pa) in Yoruba. Can you imagine? The man has totally lost respect in this country. The seat of the President has become a joke because we have a lethargic man, who, unfortunately, some of us trusted that he could have been able to bail out this country. We said he was reputed for his discipline and frugality and all of that, which has turned out to be a myth,” he said.
