Against the backdrop of a bleak economic future for Nigeria painted by the World Bank recently, the Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Council has said the report justifies the need to have its candidate, Atiku Abubakar, elected president of the country to address the nation’s many challenges.
The PUNCH had in an earlier report, quoted Alex Sienaert, World Bank’s lead economist for Nigeria, as saying that in 2023, debt servicing will gulp 123.4 per cent of the country’s total revenue.
Sienaert had stated this in a presentation titled ‘Nigeria Public Finance Review: Fiscal Adjustment for Better and Sustainable Development Results’ for the month of November.
“Borrowing more is not the solution: debt costs are rising rapidly, squeezing non-interest spending,” he said, adding that “debt servicing has surged over the past decade and is expected to continue increasing over the medium-term, crowding out productive spending.”
Responding in a statement to the presentation, spokesman of the campaign council, Senator Dino Melaye said, “The solution to the years of the locusts under APC is Atiku Abubakar, who worked under a team that brought great economic prosperity to Nigeria.
“The APC presidential candidate is always eager to dissociate from Buhari, but he carries a DNA that is infused with the APC blood and water. What can he do differently? Besides, if he had a different solution he could have offered it to his failed party so as to pave a smooth way for his own emergence. Having ‘chilled’ with the big boys, he now wants to ‘chill’ alone.
“Nigerians should look forward to the termination of APC’s arrested development when Atiku/Okowa and the PDP return Nigeria to its winning ways. As President Obasanjo said in his famous aphorism, there is no need to reinforce failure.
“What the World Bank report has done is an economic advisory, which Nigerians have to take seriously by looking away from APC and embracing the People’s Democratic Party on February 25, 2023.”
Source – PUNCH