Showing posts with label Prof Ango Abdullahi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prof Ango Abdullahi. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Ibrahim Babangida Years: Despotism In Full Sail

 By Tony Eluemunor

Please take your mind back to 1990 when Sadd­am Hussein’s Iraq invad­ed and annexed Kuwait; the price of crude petroleum jumped because the ensuing war disrupted oil supplies. A totally unforeseen windfall, earning for Nigeria $12.1 billion. But did the windfall benefit Nigeria? A re­port put it thus: “Fiscal discipline broke down once more (because) established budgetary proce­dures were by-passed and the strategic planning processes that had been established under the Structural Adjustment Pro­gramme were largely ignored. Of major concern was the expendi­ture of the oil revenue without any budgetary authorization.”

*Babangida 

This huge amount of money was fluffed away though Nigerians had by then been suffocating under SAP for four whole years! And wait for this; the 1991 budget suffered a defi­cit spending of N35.5 billion. It was as though that oil bonanza never happened.

I know that those who celebrat­ed former Military President Ibra­him Badamosi Babangida (IBB) as Nigerians best ruler as he turned 80, never failed to mention the Na­tional Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND) the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) Peoples Bank of Nigeria (PBN) the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DIFRRI) and others as programmes and bodies he established. But have they told us how such benefitted Nigeria?