By Joshua Egbodo
Abuja
Erstwhile chairman of the House of Representatives committee on appropriations, Abdulmumin Jibrin has fired back at Senator Dino Melaye on his call that President Muhammadu Buhari should sack some key ministers, insisting that the president cannot be blamed on the prevailing circumstances.
Jibrin in a statement yesterday said as former chairman of the House Committee on Finance, he was in a good position to contribute and proffer solutions to the current problem.
“Let me state very categorically that the President is not to be blamed on the state of our economy today. It is unfair and very wicked to push such blame on a man who just came on board barely a year ago.
“Not even a magician can turn around the economy within a period of one year. The biggest spending in our economy, that is the budget, hasn’t even run a full course of one year. Yet, some people want to crucify President Buhari. Haba! Let’s face reality.
“We all know how badly oil price has gone, a situation that adversely affected our foreign reserves and mounted pressure on the naira. No matter what approach we adopt to manage and deal with the situation, recovery will be slow.
“It is not President Buhari’s fault. Everyone seems to forget when the whole country was supporting more spending as against saving. But, here we are today, soaked in the rainy day. President Buhari should not be used as anybody’s scapegoat”.
“The recurrent expenditure, which has escalated and constituted a huge burden on our yearly budget rose from N950.32billion in 2006 to N1.372.20 trillion in 2008 and N2.593.62 trillion in 2015. This was not created by President Buhari.
“Similarly, the total cash call (oil production cost) which rose from about N200 billion in 2006 to about N1.2 trillion in 2015 was not a creation of President Buhari. The cash call has remained another tale of burden on our yearly budget. Statutory transfers including that of the NASS are not left behind. Statutory transfers rose from just about N100 billion in 2006 to N375.62 billion in 2015. President Buhari was not the President then”, he added.