Buhari copied ex-president Jonathan’s budget – Charles Soludo reveals

Former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Charles Soludo has stated that the 2016 budget presented by President Muhammadu Buhari was almost the same as the one presented by his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan.

According to Soludo, the present budget was a carbon copy of the one by Jonathan’s government, adding that defeating old bad ideas could be better that initiating new ones.

He said this while speaking at the 13th Daily Trust Dialogue in Abuja on Thursday.

''The present budget is more of the same to the previous ones. Mr. Vice President [Prof. Yemi Osinbajo], If you scale your budget on the scale of GDP, it is almost the same with the previous government.

''It has a historic 37% deficit as we never had it before. The truth is that you are borrowing 37% with only 30 per cent on capital project,'' Prof. Soludo stressed.

''To craft the new agenda, we must defeat the old agenda. We cannot make progress in the country with the tools and agenda of the old,''  Soludo said, adding that the APC-led government was over-following the fall in the price of crude oil globally.