Former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Dr. Olisa Agbakoba, has said the ₦10 trillion budget presented to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari will not take Nigerians out of poverty.
He also advised the federal government to consider legislation on criminal immunity to Nigerians who have plundered the country, as this will lead to a massive inflow of Nigeria’s money in foreign banks.
In a statement made available to newsmen yesterday, Agbakoba, who commended President Buhari for laying the budget estimates in good time, said the country cannot have an anemic budget of ₦10 trillion for 200 million Nigerians, as this was equivalent to ₦50,000 per person, per annum.
According to the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), “This will keep us in poverty abysmally when we need double-digit growth. In a country of 200 million people, where 50 percent is living in poverty, the budget reflects many missing fundamentals.
“The starting point with this budget is a diagnosis of our condition. I would diagnose that Nigeria is afflicted with malignant metabolic economic syndrome complicated by high inflation, high-interest rates, mass unemployment, weak infrastructure, slow growth, unclear borrowing policy, unaccountable subsidy among others.
“On the basis of a gross domestic product of $400 billion, the baseline annual budget should be 20 percent which approximates ₦20 to ₦30 trillion annual spend rather than the miserly ₦10 trillion budget. Our annual spend is weak, and we have to infuse large money into it. For monetary policy, we need urgent quantitative easing, which is easing of all interest rates in particular to slack the heavy burden of high-interest rates on lending afflicting long-suffering Nigerians. We must be very proactive to look for new funds.