An NGO, Protest to Power Movement/Citizens Action to Take Back Nigeria, has urged the Federal Government to make public its National Economic Recovery and Growth Plan.
Mr Jaye Gaskia, the National Coordinator of the organisation, made the plea in a statement issued on Tuesday in Abuja.
Gaskia said, “The most important thing we are still waiting for is the much promoted and awaited National Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (NERGP) which the Federal Government said it was being prepared.
“Government has further claimed that NERGP, upon which President Muhammadu Buhari’s 2017 budget proposals was based, will be released in December 2016.”
“If indeed the 2017 budget estimates were based on NERGP, then, it shouldn’t be difficult to release the document for public consumption and engagement.
“I mean this document ought to have either been released before the budget estimates or, at the very least, along with the 2017 budget estimates.
“We are also waiting for the promised performance report of the 2016 budget which ought to have been prepared before the 2017 estimates, upon which we were supposed to have derived the 2017 estimates.”
According to him, 2017 must be the year that we will all begin to ask fundamental questions and, for the sake of our present and future, start taking government to task and taking action to reclaim our humanity.
“We must ask about the end of the year’s report card of the much taunted N500 billion Social Investment Programme in the 2016 budget according to the repeated statement of the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed,” he said.
Gaskia said that the same social investment programme was conceived and included in the 2016 budget in December 2015.
“Though, we now know that as of November 2016, only N1billion of this amount has been spent, and only N70 billion was later released for spending or as cash backing, leaving a deficit of N429 billion.
“We also know that the same amount of N500 billion was simply rolled over into the 2017 estimates without any analysis of the performance the previous year.
“If the N500 billion in the 2017 estimate is approved and appropriated eventually, the reality will be that in two years, only N571 billion would have been appropriated instead of N1trillion,” Gaskia said. (NAN)