Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday presented the 2016 budget to the National Assembly.
Some ministers, speaking to Channels TV, shared their views on the implementation of the budget and their expectations.
Udoma Udo Udoma, the minister of budget and national planning said it’s an infrastructure and a job budget which highly considered the need to increase the investment on infrastructure as a way to revive the economy.
Kayode Fayemi, the minister of solid minerals said: “We are already diversified in terms of GDP. Oil only accounts for about 12% of the GDP but it accounts for the bulk of the revenue and that is where the challenge is.
“So we need to start driving the revenue in the direction of Agriculture, solid minerals, communications and other non-oil sectors so that we would have a much more realistic job creating, revenue generating economy.”
Audu Ogbe, the minister of agriculture promised that there would be “increased support in seed, training, extension services, post-harvest management and bigger overseas market for their produce.”
According to him, two things excites him about the budget and they are; the job issue for young people and the return of teacher training colleges in the local governments.
Chris Ngige, the minister of labour and employment said Nigerians should expect jobs and more jobs.
“We will give employment that will be decent. For example, one of the programmes we are going to execute is the conversion of graduates into the teaching cadre. We’ll give them training after Youth Corps, 1-year post Youth Corps, 2-year post Youth Corps, that is the bar and we will start form there; get them into teaching.”
