Zainab Ahmed, the Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, will provide the facts that were noticeably absent from the President’s N16.39 trillion budget presentation address.

Ben Akabueze, the Director-General of the Federation Budget Office, announced this on Politics Today, a current affairs program on Channels Television. He also revealed other budget figures.

The budget, according to Akabueze, is the largest the Federal Government has ever given, but it is also ‘way lower than it should be.’

“The problem in Nigeria – and I’m talking about the government here – isn’t that we spend too much money; it’s that we spend too little,” he continued.

He noted that there is a global measure called the Public Expenditure-GDP ratio.

He said for Nigeria, the ratio was still 12 percent and the average for Africa was 22 percent, while there were countries on the continent with over 30 percent, with developed countries having up to 40 percent.

Akabueze, while justifying the borrowing spree by the regime, noted that the average revenue-GDP in Africa was 20 percent while Nigeria was between eight and nine percent.

“Imagine if we did not now run a deficit budget and have to spend only the revenue, it means we spend maybe eight to nine percent of our GDP. So, it should bridge that gap to get the ratio to a certain level – a minimum. That is why we need to borrow,” he said.

According to him, the International Monetary Fund requires a revenue-to-GDP ratio of at least 15% to approach fiscal viability, and Nigeria is just halfway there.