The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Edo State has picked holes in the 2014 Appropriation Act recently signed into law by the state governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, describing same as motley of uncoordinated numbers and lacking reality.
State PDP chairman, Chief Dan Orbih, who was speaking to journalists in Benin City, the state capital on Tuesday, said that after an in-depth analysis of the 2014 Edo State budget, the party arrived at the conclusion that the budget was “not more than the paper on which it was written”.
Insisting that the budget has an inbuilt deficit spending of 30 per cent, he said that “if the state governor had sought the views of economists, he would have known that such spending gap is an invitation to a chaotic financial arrangement”.
Orbih noted that N49 billion of the total budget of N160 billion was expected to be sourced through loan, saying, “With this development, the state government has further mortgaged the future of the state with a huge debt burden that may collapse future governments in the state.
“Bendel Brewery is dead, Nigerian Observer is in comatose, Edo Line is bedridden, Edo Transport is being buried, the long proposed Ehor Fruit Juice factory is rotting away, and the planned Uromi Cassava Plant is moribund. Where else can jobs come from? The state government is lost and is only investing in roads that cost five times their true value.
“It is inconceivable that the state government plans to build three model schools in each of the three senatorial zones of the state, when facts on ground show that existing ones are ill-equipped in terms of content and facilities. The so-called educational transformation programme is haphazard.
“The tragedy of this budget is that there is no indication that the state economic infrastructure will receive attention. Also, there is no plan for industrial estates that may attract small and medium sized companies to any part of the state”, the PDP chairman said.
