Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola has decried Nigeria’s current economic situation, saying the hardship now is worse than what was experienced during the civil war between 1967 and 1970.
Aregbesola, however, blamed the current hardship on the inability of the former President, Goodluck Jonathan to secure the country’s pipelines, stressing that $40m was lost to oil theft per day under Jonathan’s regime.
Speaking with reporters in Lagos, the Osun State Governor declared that the bad economic situation was responsible for his inability to pay salaries as he has been receiving less than N200m monthly allocation from the federal government when the Stae actually needed N1.7bn to pay workers.
According to Aregbesola, the country lost 200 barrel of crude oil per day under the immediate past administration.
He said,
“What we experience in Nigeria today is due to the inexplicable theft of 400, 000 barrel of oil every day during the regime of President Goodluck Jonathan-led PDP.
“It is disheartening to know that from June 2013 till when the regime left in May, 2015, that theft amounted to about 19 per cent of the Nigerian common wealth. If we calculate what the nation is losing by 100 dollars, Nigeria loses 40 million dollars daily to oil theft.
“Nobody has ever asked us how we are managing to pay salaries since we started getting less than N200m as allocation since September 2015. A sum of N1.7 billion is spent on workers’ salaries every month.
“Even the civil war was not as biting as what we are facing in Nigeria now. Because they did not declare economic state of emergency in Nigeria does not mean that Nigeria is not near to that.”
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