A Data and Information Analyst, Babajide Ogunsanwo, has called on Nigerian workers to cut down on their recurrent expenditure, which includes expenses on feeding and rent as the most recent data from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics reveal that “on average, the Nigerian man and woman spend 76 percent of their salaries on recurrent spending.”
Ogunsanwo said this while speaking on Channels Television’s flagship programme, Sunrise Daily, adding that the call for government to reduce the recurrent expenditure of the nation should first be put into practice at domestic levels.
“What we need to realize in the budget of 2014 is to understand that we all have roles to play,” he said, adding that “even though we expect the government to reduce the recurrent expenditure, we also have our roles to play by lowering our own recurrent expenditure as citizens, and prioritise our spending.”
He added that the Goodluck Jonathan led administration should not be blamed for the high and increasing recurrent expenditure in the national budget as the issue existed as far back as 1971 “when recurrent expenditure was over 83 percent of the national budget.”
He advocated that Nigerian parents should spend more on education as “on an average, the Nigerian parent spends less than one percent of their income on the education of their children.”
Ogunsawo, who lauded the Finance Minister’s presentation of the 2014 budget, spoke on the impact it would have on the youth.
While speaking on the impact the budget could have on job creation, the analyst said that there was evidence that the government is making dramatic changes in that area, as only 800,000 jobs were created in 2006 – 2011 while 1.3 million jobs were created in 2013.
The created jobs were in the informal sector and manufacturing sector.
He noted that the “reason why the youths don’t feel the impact of the jobs that are being created is because only 31 percent of these jobs are full-time jobs… so we are creating so many jobs but the jobs aren’t really targeted towards full-time private sector jobs.”
On manufacturing:
Ogunsanwo said that the manufacturing sector was improving, adding that “In 1982, for every one naira of goods we exported, we imported 52 naira. In 1999, for every one naira of good exported, we imported 23 naira. As it is today, for every one naira of goods we export, we only import 12.”
He expressed hope that the slope would change significantly as “1968 was the only year we exported more goods than we imported.”
