‘It’s anti-people’ — PDP asks national assembly not to pass proposed 2025 budget

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says the national assembly should not pass the proposed 2025 budget because it is “anti-people”.

In a statement, Debo Ologunagba, the spokesperson of the opposition party, said the president’s budget address was like “campaign rhetoric laced with unsubstantiated economic statistics”.

On Wednesday, President Bola Tinubu presented N49.7 trillion as the 2025 proposed appropriation bill before the joint sitting of the senate and house of representatives.

The proposed bill is titled “Budget of restoration: Securing peace and rebuilding prosperity”.

Tinubu said the government targets N34.82 trillion in revenue to fund the budget, with a projected expenditure of N49.7 trillion, including N15.81 trillion for debt servicing.

The president added that the bill projects that inflation would decline from the current rate of 34.6 percent to 15 percent next year, while the exchange rate is expected to improve from approximately N1,700 per US dollar to N1,500, and a base crude oil production assumption of 2.06 million barrels per day (mbpd).

However, the Ologunagba said the budget “made no meaningful provisions” for “real drivers of the national economy”.

He added that Tinubu made a “voodoo economy claim” regarding the bill projection to arrest inflation and the exchange rate “without any indices for tangible investment in the productive sector.”

The PDP spokesperson said the national assembly should “activate its legislative powers as guaranteed under Sections 80, 81, and 82 of the 1999 Constitution to rejig the budget and make provisions that are critical and pivotal to the growth of the economy and the welfare of Nigerians”.

“The PDP states that the budget address sounded more like a campaign rhetoric laced with unsubstantiated economic statistics, false promises, and conjured performance claims without clear-cut operable steps and mechanisms to address insecurity, resuscitate the economy, revamp ailing industries, shore up food production, increase the value of the naira, reduce the overall cost of living, create jobs for our youths, and guarantee better living standards for citizens,” the statement reads.

“President Tinubu dashed the hope of millions of suffering Nigerians who expected him to use the 2025 budget to make strategic provisions that will lead to the reduction in the cost of fuel, food items, electricity tariffs, and other essential goods and services that have a direct bearing on the well-being of the people.

“The PDP is dismayed that instead the budget speech was an assault on the sensibility of Nigerians when Mr. President claimed that the 2024 budget recorded a bogus 85% performance without a breakdown of the component between recurrent and capital expenditure.

“Further distressing is President Tinubu’s claim that the economy improved under his watch even in the face of acute poverty, excruciating hardship, comatose infrastructure, collapsed productive sectors, deteriorating value of the Naira, alarming 34.6% inflation, and 40% unemployment rates in the last 18 months as validated by official figures.

“The PDP, therefore, calls on the National Assembly not to pass the 2025 budget as presented but to activate its legislative powers as guaranteed under Sections 80, 81, and 82 of the 1999 Constitution to rejig the budget and make provisions that are critical and pivotal to the growth of the economy and the welfare of Nigerians.”