The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has pooh-poohed the N47.90 trillion 2025 budget estimates presented to the National Assembly, yesterday – Wednesday, December 18 – by President Bola Tinubu, as hopeless and anti-people.
The PDP, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, said the budget, if implemented as presented, would plunge the country “deeper into the abyss of insecurity, poverty and hopelessness.”
According to the opposition party, the Appropriation Bill as presented, further confirms the perceived insensitivity of the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Government to the plight of Nigerians.
The former national ruling party argued that the budget proposal would, if implemented as presented, stifle the business environment and adversely affect the productive sector while worsening unemployment and poverty.
The PDP argued that the budget made no meaningful provisions and investments for critical “sectors of agriculture and food production, electricity, petroleum and gas, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, which are the real drivers of the national economy.”
“The budget address sounded more like campaign rhetoric laced with unsubstantiated economic statistics, false promises and conjured performance claims without clear-cut operable steps and mechanisms to address insecurity, resuscitate the economy, ” the PDP declared, adding that the budget “lacks steps to revamp ailing industries, shore up food production, increase the value of the Naira, reduce overall cost of living, create jobs for our youths and guarantee better living standard for citizens.”
“President Tinubu dashed the hope of millions of suffering Nigerians who expected him to use the 2025 budget to make strategic provisions that will lead to the reduction in the cost of fuel, food items, electricity tariff and other essential goods and services that have direct bearing on the wellbeing of the people,” the PDP stressed.
“The PDP is dismayed that instead, the budget speech was an assault on the sensibility of Nigerians when Mr. President claimed that the 2024 budget recorded a bogus 85% performance without a breakdown of the component between recurrent and capital expenditure.
“Further distressing is President Tinubu’s claim that the economy improved under his watch even in the face of acute poverty, excruciating hardship, comatose infrastructure, collapsed productive sectors, deteriorating value of the Naira, alarming 34.6% inflation and 40% unemployment rates in the last 18 months as validated by official figures.”
The party said Nigerians should note that President Tinubu in his budget speech did not disclose the capital and recurrent components of the 2025 budget, pointing out that the seeming opaqueness has “increased public anxiety on the issue of full disclosure and transparency in government spending under the current administration.”
“Equally ludicrous is Mr. President’s voodoo economy claim that the 2025 budget will reduce the current inflation rate from 34.6% to 15% and improve the value of the Naira from approximately N1,700 to the dollar to N1,500 without any indices for tangible investment in the productive sector and in the face of a staggering N134.3 trillion ($91.3 billion) debt accumulated under the APC watch,” the PDP further lamented.
“Given the crippled national productive sector, it is clear that with the N47.9 trillion expenditure including N15.8 trillion provision for Debt Services, the projected N34.8 trillion revenue with N13 trillion deficit will be financed by excruciating taxes and levies on already impoverished citizens and companies operating in the country.”
Consequently, it implored the National Assembly not to pass the 2025 budget as presented, but to rejig the budget, in accordance with its constitutional powers, and make provisions that are necessary for the growth of the economy and welfare of Nigerians.
