Why Nigeria Must Borrow To Fund 2017 Budget – Adeosun

Adeosun made this known while speaking at a Town Hall meeting in Abuja on Thursday.

She said the country would rather go on short term borrowing than rely on recovered loot to fund the annual budget.

The minister revealed that the Federal Government was working to block wastage, increase GDP and embark on single window project execution.

“We cannot afford to rely on recovered loots to fund our budget, we have to go on short term borrowing,” she said.

“What borrowing does for us is that it gives us flexibility because if we recover a lot from looted funds, we can always pay back.

“It takes a long time to recover this looted money. Take a look at the Abacha loot, it has been with the Swiss government for 20 years and yet we still don’t have it back. Even on the funds recovered from government officials, we keep going to court to get them back.”

The National Assembly last week passed the 2017 Budget of Recovery and Growth, jacking up the N7.28 trillion proposed by President Muhammadu Buhari in December last year, to N7.44 trillion.

On corruption fight, Mrs. Adeosun said the whistle blower policy has made tremendous success since its introduction.

“We have over 2,500 tips from various quarters in the country through the whistle blowing policy, not just the big ones but also the small money. Someone diverting the petty cash for the university, we are able to get in there and stop it. The fight against corruption is for everybody.”

Mrs. Adeosun said some of the whistle blowers were not seeking any financial reward but only exposing corruption out of patriotism.

She noted that that the new Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit has helped the government in fishing out ghost workers and dead pensioners.

“The Initiative focuses mainly on our payroll, making sure that everybody who are getting paid are legitimate staff workers and is been paid the right amount. Through this initiative, every week we are finding people who should not be on the payroll and we are removing them.

“We are going to continue with this process until we are sure that 99.9 per cent of our payroll is accurate. The era of one person collecting 20 salaries is over. When we remove all these ghost workers, it will now create more jobs”, Mrs. Adeosun said.