Buhari Administration Will Be Nigeria’s Most Discipline Government – Adeosun

BEVERLY HILLS, May 06, (THEWILL) – The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun has promised that the present administration of Muhammadu Buhari would be the most discipline government the country has ever had in terms of fiscal accountability and responsibility.

She noted that the compound GDP of the country had been growing negatively in the last 10 years, but stressed that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari was working to correct the trend.

The minister spoke in Lagos at a town hall meeting with members of the Newspaper Proprietors' Association of Nigeria, NPAN, hosted by her counterpart in the Ministry of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.

Adeosun, who was speaking on the economy reform agenda of the government, revealed that the N165bn being paid to federal civil servants monthly represented 40 per cent of the total spending of government.

She disclosed that the N165bn spent on the monthly salaries of federal civil servants was over-bloated and could no longer be sustained by government.

The minister said the figure was too high and the government was pursuing aggressive measures to detect and prosecute ghost workers and other saboteurs in the system.

According to her, “We spend 165bn every month on salaries and when I came in there was no checking.

“Now, we have created a unit assigned with the sole responsibility of checking the salaries and catching those behind the over bloated salaries.”

Noting that the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, IPPIS, introduced by the previous administration was faulty and sabotaged by the element benefiting from the salary fraud, Adeosun regretted that many federal government establishments including the Police were yet to be captured in the system.

She expressed shock that the Nigerian Railway Corporation, NRC, which was not fully functioning had 10,000 workers in its payroll serviced by government, assuring that the anomalies in the payroll system will be corrected to weed out all ghost workers in the service.

The minister said that the fiscal focus of the administration was to ensure an economic growth that would be measured on job creation and productive sectors.

Her words, “The economy is not measured by how many private jet we have but how many jobs we create.”

“People must be productive for the economy to grow.”

“We have been a consumer economy, but we want to be productive and stop buying everything from abroad.”

“We have been borrowing to pay salaries for years and that has to stop because it is not sustainable.”

“Last year, we spent N64 billion on travelling and only N90 billion on roads. Travelling does not grow the economy and this must also

stop.”