News Editor
By Olu Balogun
Contribution of the Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Barau I Jibrin, CFR to the debate on the Second Reading of the 2025 Budget Estimate on Thursday, December 19th, 2024.
Let me commend Mr. President for his political will to bring prosperity to this country. A leader should have the political will and the resolve to turn things around for the betterment of the country. The budget proposal demonstrates the intention of the government in this regard. That’s why the budget is christened Budget of Restoration: Securing Peace, Rebuilding Prosperity.”
Peace is sine qua non for a sound economy, for a sound and up-and-doing society. And we all know the problems we are facing in terms of insecurity. Now, the government has taken steps to deal with it frontally. This is why defence and security got the highest allocation of N4.91 trillion. It shows the readiness of the government to deal with the problem of insecurity once and for all.
What do you need after tackling insecurity? For a country that creates that environment of peace, what goes next is, of course, creating a developing environment for the economy to thrive and for business – the private sector to thrive.
And how do you do that? It’s by providing the necessary infrastructure. All the necessary infrastructures needed to be put in place, such as good roads, water, and power supply infrastructure.
So now, when you do that, you allow the real sector and other sectors of the economy to begin to operate, jobs will be created, revenues will come into various entities, and, of course, taxes will be paid, and the government will have more revenues. Those revenues will be channelled towards funding social services, and so on.
Then, of course, the next thing is the human capital resources. Human capital is the key and the number one production factor globally. Now, the government has decided to allocate N3.52 trillion. So you can see the government is systematic in its way, the way it has designed to deal with our problems.
And, of course, the health sector is next. If you want your human capital to be up and running, you should provide health services so that they can be taken care of. Otherwise, your human resources and human capital will become nothing if they are not given the necessary health support.
Mr. President, this budget has a lot of goodies when we all work together and support the executive arm of government because it’s not an issue about our government alone. It’s an all-inclusive arrangement. We should all be part of the whole thing. The citizens should also be part of it.
For us here, we need to oversight properly. All our relevant committees should work to make sure that when this budget passes, we keep all those responsible for the implementation of whatever is in this budget on their toes so that they work in the best manner possible to actualise what is in this budget – one of the best budgets we have produced in this country.
But now, what we need to do after the passage is all come around to make sure that we do all that is humanly possible to ensure that it’s fully implemented. I’m sure by the time we implement this budget, this country will turn into a land of El Dorado, a land of plenty and prosperity.
