Presidency to Reduce Cost of Governance

To reduce government spending, the presidency claims that President Bola Tinubu is ready to collaborate closely with the National Assembly.

This was stated by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, on Monday.

According to the presidential adviser, the President is confident he can reduce the cost of government and clean up federal spending.

“The President is working hand in hand with the National Assembly to see how we can also bring down the level of expenditure within the National Assembly, both on the books and off the books.

“What I mean by off the books without being controversial is that we know that there has been a history of the National Assembly injecting a lot of projects within MDAs that may not be suited to the function and roles of those Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs), and the President is ready to do that,” he said.

Even while it was acknowledged that it cannot be a quick fix, the President’s adviser stated that increasing revenue is the government’s top goal.

“Increasing revenue is a top-line priority on his table, but it is not a one-strike solution. There are multiple elements to how he is going to do that – one of them is ensuring that we clean up federal expenditure in such a way that we don’t have the kinds of duplication that we have seen in the past when it comes to the expenditure in our ministries, departments, and agencies.

“The President has been very open about the fact that he is going to not only dust off the outside reports but that he is going to be the President that implements them. He has been clear about that,” Ajuri said.

His remarks reaffirmed those made by the President on Sunday, who said that the nation could not continue paying its debts with roughly 90% of its revenue.

“Can we continue to service external debt with over 90 per cent of our revenue? It is a path to destruction, we cannot continue that. We have to make hard decisions. Poverty is not a shameful thing, but it is not acceptable. We must banish it,” Tinubu said at the opening ceremony of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) annual conference in Abuja.

Tinubu stated that his administration would make difficult changes to better the country’s situation and added that, even though the first round of reforms would be unpleasant, Nigeria must be prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to put the nation on the path of development.