Peter Obi, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP presidential aspirant has said that Nigeria cannot generate revenue when a greater number of its population live in poverty.
He stated this on Tuesday while addressing PDP national assembly caucus in Abuja.
Addressing them separately, the PDP vice presidential candidate in the 2019 election explained that the state of the economy has been damaged to the extent where the country spends almost as much as it earns from revenue to service debts.
“It is a crisis situation and we can’t continue like this or we crash.
“In the first five months of last year, we earned in revenue, N1.847 trillion and used N1.802 trillion which is about 98% to service debts.
“Last year, the National Budget was N14 trillion. We were told we would borrow N4 trillion but ended up borrowing close to between N6.5 and N7 trillion.
“This year, we budgeted over N17 trillion and promised to generate over N10 trillion from revenue. The question is – from where?
“How can we generate revenue of that tune when you have over 100 million Nigerians living in poverty? Who will pay you taxes when he or she is not earning money? We blame not generating enough revenue on our GDP being low. That’s not true. We have to pull people out of poverty first so that they can pay taxes to government.
“Over 50% of working Nigerians spend more than they earn on feeding alone. And we all think that’s normal. It’s not.
“There’s nothing wrong in borrowing but something is very wrong when we borrow for consumption instead of production. We borrow and throw it away. It’s now becoming almost impossible to service the mounting debts.
“We can’t continue like this. It will take revenge on our children,” he said.
“I am aspiring because I know that I can turn this country in the positive direction within four years. We have a great country, all we need is to steer it right.”
