The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has condemned the N47.9 trillion 2025 federal budget presented by President Bola Tinubu to the National Assembly on Wednesday, describing it as “hopeless, shady, and disingenuous.”
In a press statement issued by Debo Ologunagba, its national publicity secretary, the opposition party argued that the budget, if implemented as proposed, would worsen insecurity, poverty, and hardship across Nigeria.
The PDP criticised the budget for failing to make investments in critical productive sectors such as agriculture, electricity, petroleum, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs), and other key drivers of the economy.
“The budget as presented further confirms the insensitivity of the Tinubu-led APC administration towards the plight of Nigerians,” the statement read.
The party dismissed Tinubu’s budget address as a series of “campaign rhetoric laced with unsubstantiated economic statistics, false promises, and conjured performance claims” without clear mechanisms to address the nation’s economic challenges.
The PDP expressed alarm over the absence of a breakdown of recurrent and capital expenditure, raising questions about transparency in government spending.
The party described Tinubu’s projections of reducing inflation from 34.6% to 15% and improving the naira’s value from N1,700 to N1,500 per dollar as unrealistic, given the lack of tangible investment in the productive sector.
The PDP highlighted Nigeria’s N134.3 trillion debt and criticised the budget’s reliance on increased taxes and levies to fund the N13 trillion deficit.
“Given the crippled national productive sector, it is clear that with the N47.9 trillion expenditure including N15.8 trillion provision for Debt Services, the projected N34.8 trillion revenue with N13 trillion deficit will be financed by excruciating taxes and levies on already impoverished citizens and companies operating in the country,” the statement reads.
The party warned that the proposed budget would shrink the national business environment, discourage investments, worsen unemployment, and push more Nigerians into poverty.
“The 2025 budget as proposed will shrink our national business environment, further cripple the productive sector, discourage domestic and foreign investors, lead to further depreciation of the Naira, worsen unemployment and inflation rate and push million more Nigerians into abject poverty and invariably heighten insecurity,” the opposition party said.
The PDP accused Tinubu of misrepresenting the state of the economy, noting that claims of economic improvement contradicted widespread poverty, high inflation, and alarming unemployment rates.
“Further distressing is President Tinubu’s claim that the economy improved under his watch even in the face of acute poverty, excruciating hardship, comatose infrastructure, collapsed productive sectors, and deteriorating value of the naira,” the statement said.
The PDP urged the National Assembly to reject the budget in its current form, invoking its constitutional powers under Sections 80, 81, and 82 of the 1999 Constitution to revise the provisions.
The PDP emphasised the need for the National Assembly to prioritise allocations that would stimulate economic growth, reduce poverty, and improve the welfare of Nigerians.
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
