The 78 per cent revenue projection from the non-oil sector in the 2023 budget is s a milestone in the nation’s fiscal history.
Making this assertion in a statement in Abuja, the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) said that this is the first time in more than 30 years that the Budget will not be largely funded by the oil sector.
In the statement signed by its Chairman Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, BMO said it has carefully noted that the N21.83trn Budget of 2023 has a revenue projection of N9.73trillion out of which 78 per cent is expected from the non-oil sector, compared with 22 per cent coming from the oil sector.
“This speaks to the attention the President Muhammadu Buhari administration had, since 2015, paid to economic diversification to the extent that the non-oil sector contributed 93.67 per cent of the nation’s total GDP as of Q2 of 2022.
“So it is not a fluke that Nigeria under President Buhari has gradually moved from solely depending on oil, and subjecting itself to the vagaries of the volatility of the global oil industry, to positioning itself as a country that can stand on its own without over-relying on oil.
“In comparative terms, we have had three previous administrations which had Budgets that relied almost exclusively on what comes in from oil proceeds, and that was why the country had a hard time in 2014 when there was a slump in the global oil market,” the group added.
BMO said that none of the previous Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administrations did close to the Buhari administration in weaning the country off its over-reliance on oil.
“For the avoidance of doubt, in 2001, the revenue projection from oil was 48 per cent but by 2006 which was the peak of the Obasanjo administration, it rose to 76.1 per cent (N2.8trillion out of a projected total revenue of N3.7trilllion) in spite of an oil boom that could have been used to properly diversify the economy, as well as the presence of those we were told were the economic wizards of our time.
“Not surprisingly, the trend continued under the late President Umaru Yar’Adua with 80 per cent of the budget funded by the oil sector in 2008 but dropped toward the end of the tenure of former President Goodluck Jonathan to 58 per cent in 2013.
“So these are the benchmarks we invite Nigerians to use to measure President Buhari’s firm commitment to diversifying the economy which today is seen in the fact that his final Budget has a projected revenue of only 22 per cent from the oil sector.
“These are some of the facts that the so-called economic experts who delight in misleading Nigerians have been ignoring in a bid to deny the Buhari administration its due credit”.