“Even though Nigeria is currently recovering some looted funds, it cannot rely on the loot to fund the budget”, Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun has said.
She made this known at an Abuja Town Hall meeting. Mrs Adeosun disclosed that the federal government was working to block wastage, increase GDP and embark on singlewindow project execution.
On budget funding, the minister said that Nigeria would rather go on short term borrowing than rely on recovered loot to fund the annual budget.
“We cannot afford to rely on recovered loots to fund our budget, we have to go on short term borrowing,” she said.
“What borrowing does for us is that it gives us flexibility because if we recover a lot from looted funds, we can always pay back.”
“It takes a long time to recover this looted money. Take a look at the Abacha loot, it has been with the Swiss government for 20 yearsand yet we still don’t have it back.
Even on the funds recovered from government officials, we keep going to court to get them back.
”The National Assembly recently passed the 2017 Appropriations Bill, raising the budget from N7.28 trillion earlier proposed by President Muhammadu Buhari in December last year, to N7.44 trillion.
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