Osun State Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, has lamented the worsening economic crisis in Nigeria under the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, describing the country's current situation as “more biting” when compared to the Biafra Civil War experience.
The governor told journalists during an interview that the fact that Buhari has not declared a state of emergency on the economy does not necessarily mean that all is well with Nigeria.
In a bid to defend his inability to pay workers’ salaries, Aregbesola stated that his administration has been receiving a monthly allocation of N200m, when the state actually ought to be receiving N1.7bn monthly in order to effectively pay salaries.
He went further to blame Nigeria's current economic woes on the previous administration for not securing Nigeria’s pipelines properly, allowing for a $40m daily loss due to massive crude oil theft between June, 2013 and May, 2015.
“What we experience in Nigeria today is due to the inexplicable theft of 400, 000 barrel of oil every day during the regime of President Goodluck Jonathan-led PDP”.
“It is disheartening to know that from June 2013 till when the regime left in May, 2015, that theft amounted to about 19 per cent of the Nigerian common wealth. If we calculate what the nation is losing by 100 dollars, Nigeria loses 40 million dollars daily to oil theft”.
“Nobody has ever asked us how we are managing to pay salaries since we started getting less than N200m as allocation since September 2015. A sum of N1.7 billion is spent on workers’ salaries every month”
“Even the civil war was not as biting as what we are facing in Nigeria now. Because they did not declare economic state of emergency in Nigeria does not mean that Nigeria is not near to that” said Aregbesola.
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