THE Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), has described the 2023 budget proposal by President Muhammadu Buhari as one with unrealistic projections.

The coalition of the nation’s opposition political parties also described the budget as being “high in sound, lacking in substance and as empty as the government that presented it.”

Reacting to the budget in a statement, CUPP’s spokesperson, Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, said “the 2023 budget would be a budget to draw the curtain on eight years of malfeasance, budget padding, unbridled borrowing, unprecedented corruption and wasteful expenditure.

“There is absolutely nothing in the budget that excites and instigates growth of the economy or even developmental activities and nothing to encourage foreign direct investment.

“It is clear President Buhari presented this budget just because he has to do so and he is just waiting for time so as to leave office having destroyed the country, its economy, unity, peaceful coexistence and assured future,” the statement read.

The statement added:”How can a government whose first full budget in 2016 was just N6.06 Trillion justify and celebrate over N20 trillion budget in 2023,noting that the indices were still the same. It all about padding, borrowing, shortfall in revenue generation and visionless implementation which has not meant well for Nigerians and for which the government really has nothing to show.”

Ikenga Ugochinyere said “a budget with far less than 30 per cent vote for capital expenditure is not a budget meant to serve the people.”

He accused the APC of “presenting such a budget so as to enable it to loot the money since most of the money is tied to consumables and recurrent expenditure which is easy to loot.

“It is unimaginable that a President who was elected on the mantra of fighting corruption has now successfully legitimized borrowing to fund the unquenchable thirst of his party to loot the National treasury. APC now borrows to fund looting, otherwise, there is no justification for the party in the current debt-to-revenue ratio which Nigeria operates to propose another N11 trillion.

“Already, Nigeria has the worst debt-to-revenue ratio in the entire world yet our President wants to borrow an extra N11 trillion for the APC to loot and use in the prosecution of the 2023 election,” he further said.

Ugochinyere concluded by saying that the “insensitivity of the APC to the plight of the common man is now so obvious that Nigerians have now come to the irreversible conclusion that APC is a plague and will be voted out of power so that we can rebuild our country otherwise the entire country could go bankrupt and descend into a situation of chaos and anarchy.” (Vanguard)

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