Governor Alex Otti’s 2024 budget was predicated on borrowing 68% of the N567 billion but since January he has repeatedly told Abians his government has not borrowed ‘shishi in 2024’. Whereas data from DMO says otherwise.
Caught in his own web of lies?
While presenting 2024 budget in December 2023, Governor Otti said: “We plan to finance the deficit of over N401 billion partly by new borrowings, estimated at N385.3 billion.”
Fast forward to yesterday, after presenting 2025 estimate to the house of assembly the Governor stated as follows via X:
“The remaining ₦364.1 billion, or 51% of the budget, will be financed through domestic and multilateral channels. Importantly, as with last year, we will not borrow to finance recurrent expenditures. Borrowing will only occur when necessary and will be used for projects that can repay the loans. We are pleased to report that no funds were borrowed in the 2024 fiscal year”.
Clearly, if the Governor did not borrow in 2024 as he stated it suggests that his 2024 budget performance must be below 25% because he also faltered on IGR collection by more than 35%. He was expected to borrow 67% of the revenue for funding of 2024 budget and, according to him, he did not borrow shishi.
Presently, “eminent Economist”, Alex Otti, wants to also fund 51% of 2025 budget through borrowing. He refused to tell us how his 2024 budget performed but surely his lapdog house of assembly will pass the proposal “as is” after receiving what he will surely give them within the next 10 days.
Is the Governor ashamed of telling us his current budget (2024) underperformed and achieved less than 30% or simply trying to untangle himself from his web of “official lies”?
Like Ayade like Otti
Our Governor reminds me of former Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River State and his budgets that William Shakespeare would have described as “full of sound and fury signifying nothing”..
In case you missed it, former Governor Ayade presented the following budgets to the good people of Cross River State:
‘Budget of Deep Vision” -2016
Budget of Infinite Transposition’ -2017
‘Budget of Kinetic Crystallization’ -2018
: ‘Budget of Qabalistic Densification’-2019
‘Budget of Olimpotic Meritemasis’ -2020
‘Budget of Blush and Bliss’ -2021
‘Budget of Conjugated Agglutination’ -2022
Ndi Abia, take note of this fact: just like in the case of Cross River we now have non-availability of budget performance evaluation reports to contend with and if we don’t loudly demand it now it will end same way it ended in Cross River.
Governor Alex Otti obviously borrowed from Ayade and started his own administration of “Olimpotic Wayorism” budget cycles that can only end in highway stealing of public funds. Just like Ayade, he did not present budget performance evaluation report yesterday and he captioned his own “Budget of Sustained Momentum,”
O kwa unu ahulanu eeee
Simply put, over-budgeting only enables stealing of Government funds in Nigetia. It gives the head of the executive branch wide and multiple subheads to hide behind and steal public funds mercilessly. Remember “boundary pillars, recreational facility, agricultural seedlings, ICT facility, Agricuitural Seedlings” etc that nobody has seen in Abia State? Fraudulent budgeting and review process enabled the stupidly crass looting of public funds.
Expect much worse in 2025.
In Abia State the incumbent Government claims to have spent more than N300 billion this year on various projects yet consumption has dropped to embarrassing levels that placed Abia second to LAST in VAT collection among the 36 states of Nigeria. Lowered consumption, measured via VAT collection data can only be the case if the N300 billion was not actually spent or spent outside the state. Worse still, looted using bitcoin and signatures.
Ndi Abia, we are in trouble!!
Open your eyes and use your head to guess why Governor Alex Otti is desperately afraid of “shadow government” that is strictly meant to ensure organized review of his adminstration’s activities. If Abia elites fail to speak up now Governor Otti will surely frame and subsequently arrest all critical opposition voices within the next 30 days, as planned already.
In case you don’t know, Otti “akpola police” already and still plotting more clampdown against the opposition in the state. Some PDP leaders were arrested today in Aba because Governor Otti’s wants to run away from his “shadow”. He successfully intimidated leaders of Abia APC and LP into silence and is now seeking to use federal security agents to hound PDP leaders who dare to speak out against the ongoing “olimpotic oshiocha” system deployed to calmly mobilize Abia state funds into a private pocket.
Sorry Ndi Abia, una don enter one chance bus!!
-John Billions
