The Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Atiku Bagudu, has advised Nigerians to remain hopeful, saying President Bola Tinubu’s policies to transform the country, were already yielding results.
Bagudu stated this in Abuja at a National Policy Summit put together by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (P-BAT) Academics and Professionals.
The summit had the theme: “Activating the Policies and Promises in the President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.”
Bagudu said that the president had not relented on his oars since assumption of office, working within the resources available.
“Sometimes ,in order to rebuild ,you have to live with some inconveniences. Our country Nigeria, is a great and blessed country, but for decades, particularly under democracy, Nigeria has been literally on a tiny budget,” Bagudu said.
“The highest our budget has been is less than 40 billion US dollars. Of all the countries in the world with populations of 150 million and above, we are the ones with the smallest budget.”
According to Bagudu, a study by the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation and Development, reveals that Singapore spends somewhere between 20,000 to 27,000 pounds followed by the United States where its different states spend between 10,000 to 14,000 dollars.
“This is followed by Brazil, Mexico and China spend between 4000 to 800 to 5000 to 700 dollars,” he said.
“The study went further to extrapolate that for you to have a good primary education system, you need to be spending at least 700 dollars.
“This calls for a fundamental rethink and to achieve this ,we need those blessed with that capacity to contextualise beyond the polity so as to quite the blame game which is what the president is doing.”
Bagudu said that there was also need to have insightful leaders willing to accept the challenge and take on new ideas.
He noted that Nigerians had a reason to be optimistic because they had found a leader in Tinubu who had succeeded before in a leadership capacity to transform Lagos from what it used to be through an inclusive leadership.
“Today, there is cry for inclusion across the country and we have the leader who believes in inclusion and has practiced it in Lagos by creating a state that worked for all ,carrying everyone along and giving them the opportunity to excel,” the minister said.
“All that is needed is a support system for Tinubu to work.
“His policy to move the economy from less than 500 billion GDP, to a trillion Naira GDP in three years, requires boldness and requires risk taking with our support to his leadership.
“The decision to remove fuel subsidy is a necessary step .As painful as it may be, that needed to be done to lead to a greater tomorrow.
“So, some of the measures being taken particularly under the leadership of the president are measures we believe will lead to a greater tomorrow,” he added.
