Vanguard (Lagos)
14 October 2008
NIGERIA'S enormous savings from the oil windfall have been depleted and what is left may not tide the country over any financial turn down should oil price fall below the budget benchmark of $62 per barrel, according to the Governor of the Central Bank (CBN), Professor Chukwuma Soludo.
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What do you expect from an administration that would rather waste the windfall accounts on things like the 70 Million Naira spent by one state alone to break Ramaddan fast and the importation of Rice, cement and other items that we could produce internally by impossing adequate tarrifs to allow local producers to catch up. Will these mugus be able to reduce their budgetary marker estimates fast enough to keep up with the fast declining crude oil price – the only person I feel sorry for in all this is Soludo for being in such bad company of mugus. In the news 2 days ago was Olu Falae advising King Tarry-A-Doer to spend the $62 Billion savings now so as to make the people happy about their President (the savings that we just learned, 2 days later, that it is no longer there) - can anyone believe that Olu was a Finance Minister - with ignorant people like him and Shamsudeen, no wonder our nation is always adrift back- wards. Why don’t they wait another 6 months for the declining oil price to reach bottom so the mugus could reduce their estimates to match the actual price once and for all. Leading to 2007, we asked the politicians to be more patient while OBJ continued with the reform policies he started in 1999 so he can hand over to the politicians a more robust economy and more stable polity. But noooo they all shouted in unity claiming that they’ve learned to work amicably amongst themselves for the betterment of the common masses. With their foreign aiders and abettors who never cared for our ordinary folks but for a regular flow of oil as long as we have mugus in power that they can easily manipulate. I am tapped out. Good luck and good riddance to all I ever cared about.