PDP Describes Tinubu’s Proposed 2024 Budget as Deceptive, Hopeless, Strangling

Paschal Emeka, Abuja / Posted 30 November 2023

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has criticised President Tinubu’s proposed N27.5 trillion budget for 2024, describing it as “deceptive, strangling, and hopeless.”

The party alleged that the budget is lacking concrete mechanisms and steps to revive the economy, create jobs, and address the country’s economic woes.

Party spokesperson Debo Ologunagba, in a statement on Wednesday noted that the budget was “predicated and expected to be funded from multilateral and bilateral foreign loans and increased taxes on Nigerians” and would “further mortgage our nation and strangulate the already impoverished Nigerians.”

The PDP also criticised the budget’s lack of provisions for reviving the manufacturing, energy, agricultural, and education sectors.

“The lack of concrete and verifiable action plans to revive these key sectors is a pointer that the Tinubu-led APC government is bereft of ideas and completely disconnected from the reality of life being faced by Nigerians,” Ologunagba said.

The government’s adoption of a N750 per US dollar exchange rate, did not seat well with the opposition party, labeling it a “defeatist” policy that would “weaken our productive sector, wreck the purchasing power of Nigerians and the capacity of the youths to be creative.”

PDP therefore, called on the National Assembly to reject the budget and make provisions that would “promote economic growth and the welfare of Nigerians.”

“This 2024 budget as presented by President Tinubu therefore represents hopelessness for Nigerians,” Ologunagba said.

“It is pathetic that the President, whose main duty is to provide for the security and welfare of Nigerians could present a budget that is not geared towards the attainment of that Constitutional duty imposed on him.”

President Tinubu earlier on Wednesday, 29th November, 2023, presented the 2024 Appropriation Bill to a joint session of the National Assembly, outlining his administration’s priorities for the upcoming fiscal year.

Themed “Budget of Renewed Hope,” the president said the proposed budget focuses on national security, job creation, economic stability, human capital development, poverty reduction, and social security.