says govt has been borrowing to run its affairs

By Daniel Idonor

ABUJA -President Goodluck Jonathan has assured Nigerians that he will not be party to inflicting pains on Nigerians but warned that the country cannot continue to borrow to fund its economy.

He gave the assurance at the 2011 Christmas Carol Service held at the banquet hall of the presidential villa last night.

He said the whole world was experiencing economic challenges and Nigeria was not exception but it will fizzle out soon.

“I will plead with religious leaders, both Christians and Muslims, to join government and see how we will improve the economy of this nation.

“We are witnessing a nation, at least those who are my age, 50 years and above, as the years are going the challenges are becoming more. Most societies are becoming more enlightened. The demand for power has increased, the demand for water, the demand for everything. Probably at Independence,  how many cars did we have in this country? Even after the civil war, how many vehicles did we have? How many roads? How many streets had light?

“I remember the day I was chatting with a group of elders and they said after the war, there was light everywhere, they travelled out and so on. I came to live in Port Harcourt in 1955 , even then, it was only Port Harcourt that had light, even the big cities, Bonny… But now, government must make sure even the smallest village and settlements have light. Without light you cannot preserve farm produce, so now the demand for everything has expanded over the period, there are more challenges.

And we believe with the present, for the past several years, government has been borrowing money to run its affairs and the amount we borrow continues to increase. Who are we borrowing this money for ? Who will come and upset the debts? I normally asked. And of course the professionals in the oil industry are making predictions that the oil reserve that we have, that in 35 to 40 years  will dry up.

“By God’s grace we will discover more oil reserves, but based on what we have now and assuming we are unable to discover more, in 35 to 40 years, it will dry up. I pray not to live up to that time anyway, but some of the people here will witness that situation.


Special rendition by former Zambian President, Kenneth Kaunda during a Xmas carol service.Photo Credit: NAN

“So even now that we have oil,  we are borrowing and we are not expanding the economy, in the next 35 to 40 years, assuming we don’t discover more oil reserves, what will happen to our children and grandchildren? Do we begin to plan a country where  our children and grandchildren will become slaves? Even now Nigerians are running out of this country. There was a time we were talking about check-out but now that slogan has died down.

“It will come to that point government must look for ways to expand the economy, we must look for other ways of earning money, we must go back to farming. And not just subsistence farming that we know but really taking farming as a business. We must create wealth through farming, we must industralise, we must begin to produce things in this country and we need resources to do that.

“And especially with the number of people graduating from the universities every year, how do we create jobs for them? And I believe we cannot continue with the number of people graduating from the universities every year. How do we create jobs for them? And I believe we cannot continue to borrow. In fact, last year, our capital budget was N1.146 trillion and we borrowed the whole capital budget and even a little more.

“This year with the present budget we are paying back the part of the money we borrowed but what is in the budget is only N560 billion, just about half of the money we borrowed, who will pay the balance and when with interest? There is no way we can continue to run the economy this way. We find it difficult to do things that appear not to be popular and I know that one of the things that worry us is the fear of the unknown. If there is subsidy, what will life be? Yes we know there will be a little pain because we know ourselves, Nigerians sometimes exploit opportunities.

Ordinarily the pains would have been minimal in the sense that as we are talking now diesel is deregulated since Obasanjo time and nobody is going to touch diesel and most of the vehicles we use in carrying load use diesel. Ordinarily transport cost for any vehicle that use diesel is not supposed to change but Nigerians being what they are at the beginning will try to be funny and we must encourage the use of gas and all that and use of vehicles that have fuel efficiency. Most countries even the bulbs they use now are the ones that consume very little power.

“Nigerians must adjust and I believe that apart from the fact that some people will want to exploit us at the beginning, just like when GSM just came in, when MTN started, they were even hoarding the SIMcards. To buy a SIM card at a time you had to do funny things to buy them because people were desperate but now the companies give you SIM card with credit on it just to hook up to their line. I tell Nigerians that we are very hopeful and so nobody should fear.

“There is no government, maybe in very few cases in history, well it  is also recorded somewhere in the Bible where somebody wanted to take over from the father and promised to flog the people more but ofcourse we also know what happened, the whole empire scattered. There is nobody who will want to deliberately inflict suffering on his people. Goodluck Jonathan can never be one.

“I know the pains Nigerians are passing through, yes I am here in the state house and being fed by government but that does not keep me so far from the people, there is no day that I don’t interact with Nigerians, both low and high, and I appreciate the pains of the people.

“We are facing challenges but we must take certain decisions to reposition our economy so that things will ease out. If we don’t have the courage to do so then we will continue to be dying in pains until God knows when. So my belief is that at a particular time, people must be courageous to take the rightful decisions”.

“We may experience some minor pains for some months but people will want to exploit, ordinarily if people don’t want to exploit us, it is supposed not to be so when you look at the chart, even if you remove subsidy on fuel on the world average, the price of fuel in Nigeria still be among the last 30 percent, the charts are there because most countries add a lot of tax on fuel but we are not adding any tax”.

NOTE======


please  tellme  if   mr. president  GEJ  is  normal?WHY  ONLY  FUEL  SUBSIDY??THE  ONLY  THING  THAT  NIGERIANS  BENEFIT  FROM  AS  A  COUNTRY.

WHY
WHO  IS  MISLEADING  HIM

Like looking at his wor-wor, dummy face is not enough pain.
Keep borrowing. . . .you have no choice!
Okonjo-Iweala is in your team to make all 'gbese' go away with powerful negotiation skills!

[size=20pt]"I will plead with religious leaders, both Christians and Muslims,[/size] to join government and see how we will improve the economy of this nation.

Wharrra dunce!
Why not add Babalawos too!

Watched him live and was wondering what da f!uck!

Honestly, this man needs to learn to shut up some in the coming year. Nigerians are definitely going to feel the pain of the increase to come and it is insensitive for reports to continue to flow of him talking of how that is not going to happen at all.

I'm happy he admitted being fed 'awoofly' by the government in the state house. If he truly empathizes with the common man, he would jettison this rubbish talk about fuel subsidy removal and explore other means of boosting the economy. For instance, If he cuts down on the 'awoof' and 'executive excesses' that he and other government officials enjoy (at all levels of government), the savings would be far more than that of fuel subsidy removal. Get real, Mr. President!