Minority leader slams ‘budget of taxation’

Senate Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, has alleged that the N10.33 trillion 2020 budget presented by President Muhammadu Buhari is full of unattainable proposals, slamming it as ‘budget of taxation’.

The senator lamented that many items on the proposal were jumbled together without definable direction and would therefore not achieve any meaningful thing for the masses of Nigeria.

“Very many things were put and jumbled together: budget of fiscal consolidation, investing in critical infrastructure and so forth.”

“In other words, putting everything together like that reminds us of what Shakespeare said: a tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”

Further dissecting the budget, Senator Abaribe said rather than term it budget of consolidation, the appropriate name have been budget of taxation, a development he said would further impoverish Nigerians.

“I want to suggest a name to those who wrote this speech for Mr President, that this is nothing but a budget of taxation. It is a budget that is based on taxation. It’s based on 7.5 per cent increase in VAT, based on several other increases.

“The Senate leader, Senator Yahaya Abdullahi, has helped us in his lead debate on how the federal government intends to secure loans in order to shore up the budget deficit while faulting the development.

“How do you talk about job creation when you do not invest on what will create jobs? Debt servicing as a component is higher than capital expenditure. Imagine proposing N2trn for capital expenditure, and then N2.4trn for debt servicing!

“The projected growth that they put in the budget was 1.9 per cent, less than the population growth of 2.6 per cent. So, if we look at it globally, we are still struggling.

“We may have to take over and direct the economic policy of this government. having seen that they have not done anything and they have failed.

“Two assumptions are critical for this government. First, the assumption on oil prices. I know that our people were happy when there seem to be a little problem in the Middle East with Iran, which led to a spike in the oil price but that seems to have gone down now.  This means that our projection for the cost of oil may also be off the mark.

“The second one is our projection for daily oil production. Last year, the average production level was 1.8m BPD. Why don’t we just keep it there? Why must we go up to 2.1 only to be disappointed at the end of the day?

“I know that you have promised the executive that we are going to work very well with the executive to produce the budget, but I plead with my colleagues to look at the facts. You can’t run away from facts.

“The fact here is that this is not a sustainable budget. If we need to change, we must be able to look at the critical fundamentals of this budget speech and make adjustments as due.”

However, this did not go down well with the Senate President, Ahmad Ibrahim Lawan, who insisted that he should have concentrated on the contents of the budget rather than taking the chambers through a literature class.

“Minority leader, this is not a literature class and I want to appeal that you talk on what was read in the budget speech.”

Senate later raised concerns about securing loans and other issues.

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