Labour and Employment Minister Chris Ngige has warned that Nigeria may not have money to fund its capital projects in 2023, if the country fails to remove subsidy from petroleum products and cut the cost of governance, among other economic measures.
The minister spoke at this year’s World Day Against Child Labour with the theme: Universal social protection to end Child Labour yesterday in Abuja.
Ngige made it clear that the country is broke.
He said: “Everybody in Nigeria should be patriotic to know that we are broke as a country. That is the truth of the matter. We must change our old ways, all of us.
“Without removal of oil subsidy, petroleum subsidy, we will have a zero capital budget for 2023. That is the truth of the matter.
“And without capital projects, it means that your economy will lie prostrate on the ground because it is the capital project expenditure that gingers our economy, that puts money directly into production. Every other money you put in recurrent is for consumption; it doesn’t create jobs.
“We need to create jobs with capital expenditure. These are ominous signs; they are red flags. We will have to assist the country and ourselves by asking ourselves: shall we continue to do what we are doing now?”
The minister also said the country cannot put more money into social protection net to end child labour.
“Can we put in more money? For now, the answer is no. Can we retain the former amount that we are putting there, N500 billion? The answer is difficult because the earnings are not the same,” Ngige added.
Director of International Labour Organisation (ILO) country office for Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Liaison Office for ECOWAS, Vanessa Phala, said although social protection had grown to take a prominent role in national and state level policy documents, development plans and budgetary allocations in Nigeria remained low.
She said: “The latest ILO Social Security Enquiry performed, in collaboration with the Government of Nigeria in 2019, showed that only 12 per cent of children benefit from social protection through the Home Grown School Feeding programme with no income support in the form of child or family benefit.
“I want to use the occasion to call on the Government of Nigeria to increase investment in social protection through improved fiscal space for social protection, extension of social protection to the informal and rural economy and establish a universal child and family benefit.”
