Governor Aminu Masari of Katsina State has decried the country’s debt service figures, saying Nigeria is living on borrowed time.
He spoke on Friday at the Banquet Hall of General Muhammadu Buhari House, Katsina at the public presentation of the compendium of achievements of his government captioned, “Restoration Mission Accomplished”.
“Since the early 90s particularly from 1999, the production quarter in Nigeria has been two million. Down the line, between 1999 to date, we are talking about 24 years, and the quarter remains the same and we have not been able to produce up to 2.2 million barrels of crude oil per day,” he said.
“If we continue to go the way we are going, certainly it will be impossible to pay salary in the next two to three years.
“Though I am not an economist, the manner in which Nigeria spends 90 percent of its earnings to service debt, is a testimony that we are living on borrowed time because we are not paying but servicing so our arrears don’t accumulate. So, everybody has a responsibility in this regard. We have to use our common sense.
“Luckily enough with the technology now, every month you know how much your state is getting, you know how much each local government area is getting and you know what’s left after payment of salaries
“That’s why we invest in capital projects to maintain the status quo. So, the incoming state administration needs your understanding and support to deliver on its mandate and not expect business as usual.”
“And with regards to this compendium, it’s not possible to capture everything on the achievements recorded across certain ministries, departments, and agencies, but nothing less than 80-90 percent of the achievements have been captured within the period under review,” Masari noted.
Earlier in his welcome address, the Deputy Governor of the State, Mannir Yakubu attested that a lot of achievements have been made in all sectors of development in the last eight years.
These he said include the reformation of health, agriculture, water resources, security, education, environment, and economy among other sectors of development, hoping that, the incoming state administration will do better than the outgoing government.
In his remarks, the facilitator of the compendium and Chief Executive Officer of Continental Computers, Salisu Kadandani, gave some briefs on the two terms compendium which he said contains two volumes.
The Secretary to the Katsina State Government, Muntari Lawal, who reviewed the compendium, expressed concern that, shortly after the outgoing administration took over the mantle of leadership in 2015, the oil price went down in the global market thereby affecting negatively most of the planned projects.
“We even reached a point that we regretted being voted by the people, we ended up scratching our heads,” he added.
