Concerned members of the House of Representatives and leadership of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) on Tuesday expressed optimism that Nigeria can fund its annual budget without recourse to external borrowing.
This, according to them can be achieved by putting necessary policy measures in place through domestication of treaties with developed countries which serve as safe havens for stolen funds and enforcement of extant laws on anti-corruption.
Kayode Oladele, chairman, House Committee on Financial Crimes and Ayuba Wabba, NLC President affirmed this through separate interviews with BusinessDay in Abuja.
Oladele (APC-Ogun) who sponsored the bill which seeks to enforce seizure of proceeds of crime scaled through third reading on the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, 18th January, 2017; emphaised the need to deepen the ongoing anti-graft campaign.
Oladele who described the several million foreign currencies and naira recovered by the Economic and Financial Crimes (EFCC) as “child’s play”, argued that Nigerian can adequately fix the huge infrastructure deficit with the recovered funds and others stolen and stacked away funds in other countries across with world through deliberate policy and foreign collaboration.
“In terms of how to fund budget and in terms of wealth of the people,we are looking for funding of our budget through external loan and people who have stolen our commonwealth, if we are able to do our work well, we will be able to recover these monies. We will be able to fund our budget.
“When we look at the public finance, it runs to billions of naira. If you look at he 2017 budget, the President had presented 7.5 trillion budget out of which we are to borrow about 4 trillion. From this, we are looking at domestic borrowing and external or foreign borrowing. But if you look at what EFCC recovered so far, it ran into trillions. This will go a long way to reduce the amount of both internal and external borrowing.
“It shows that we have quite a lot of people who have stolen our commonwealth. If we are able to do our work very well, we can reduce the amount of borrowing to finance our budget.
“For instance, in those days when we were talking about borrowing, I’m not talking about this year or later year, particularly before 1999, the White people used to say that some few Nigerians can bank-roll our budget. Because they are aware of where they use to keep their monies. And they knew the extent and how much they have in their bank accounts,” the Ogun State lawmakers said.
In a separate interview, Ayuba Wabba, NLC President who applauded the present administration’s effort on anti-corruption campaign, harped on the need to adhere to accountability, rule of law and due process.
Ayuba who reietrated the Congress’ stance against corruption, noted that the recent reports confirmed that “Nigeria is in recession because of those people have stolen more than enough for the next generation.”
KEHINDE AKINTOLA, Abuja
