Rep Predicts Better Days For Nigerians

Hon. Kolawole Babatunde, a member of the House of Representatives representing Akoko South East/Akoko South West federal constituency of Ondo state, has reportedly hurled good news on Nigerians.

Speaking in Akure, the state capital with The Nation, the lawmaker predicted that there better days ahead for Nigerians if the 2016 budget is prudently executed.

He described the 2016 budget as a budget of optimism, and promised Nigerians that all the electoral promises made by the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the 2015 presidential campaign would soon become a reality.

House of Reps members during one of their plenary sessions.

Babatunde, who pleaded with Nigerians to be more patient with President Mohammadu Buhari-led government, attributed the delay in fulfilling the promises to the economic realities on ground. He said President Buhari’s hands were tied because of the visionless budget he inherited.

The Ondo born lawmaker who extoled Buhari for disclosing that N2 trillion would be borrowed to finance the budget, insisted that no nation can do without borrowing, except it does not want to develop.

In his own words: “The 2015 budget could be said not to have impacted on the lives of Nigerians at all. In the first instance, the Capital Component (N557 billion) which was 16 percent of the budget was too low to be effective. Yet, of this amount, less than N200 billion was released.

“While the Recurrent component of the 2015 budget performed in most cases up to over 70 percent, the aspect that would have brought succor to the Nigerian people performed less than 40 percent. Again, there were so many revenue leakages and abuses of budget processes.

“For me, the 2016 budget is a budget of optimism. For the first time, the country is having a budget that is not only highest in terms of estimates with N6.08 Trillion, but also it’s the most people oriented in the last few years.

“In the 2016 budget, the ratio of Capital Expenditure is 32.37 percent as opposed to 2015 where we had only 16 percent for Capital Expenditure.

“It’s the capital projects that benefit the ordinary people more. Also in the budget are Special Intervention Programmes like the Home Grown School Feeding Programme, the Post NYSC Entrepreneurial Development Programme and also the Micro Credit Loans for SMEs which is meant to benefit the Market Women more.