Abuja used to be the safest city in Nigeria and this is not even debatable. We the Abuja residents used to boast about how safe and secure our city is. Abuja residents used to throw jabs and shades at residents of other cities and states but nobody dwelling or residing in Abuja can boldly talk about how safe the city is anymore.

The insecurity situation keeps getting worse. It has been bad but never this bad as the whole security formation collapsed after the kuje prison break. According to the security report, there are Boko Haram and ISWAP members loitering in the Abuja metropolis and scattered and strategically placed in different parts of Abuja waiting for the right time to strike.

National Parks and recreational centers in Abuja are being shut down for fear of invasion. Private Restaurants and private businesses are being asked to shut down or if they must operate they must not operate late at night for fear of invasion. There are constant newsletters from security operatives about the planned attacks by Boko Haram and ISWAP.

Soldiers lost their lives yesterday after they were ambushed by terrorists around the Bwari area of Abuja and the report is that the terrorists were actually heading to the headquarters of the Nigerian Law school which is located in Bwari to carry out their attack.

I as an Abuja resident who has resided in Abuja for a while now haven’t experienced this type of security breach in the capital city. Abuja residents have been living in constant fear; fear of the unknown. No one knows where they are going to attack next.

For the record, this is not a political witch-hunt neither is it criticism against the government or those in governance or against whomsoever but this is a statement of fact, verified facts and not to induce fear or panic in the minds of residents of Abuja but to let those who may not be aware to know that Abuja is actually one of the unsafest places to live right now in Nigeria. The person seating close to you or sharing that Keke ride or boarded that taxi with you may be a Boko Haram member that was “jailbroken” out of Kuje prison.

It is disheartening that Abuja residents are still struggling with fuel scarcity which started last year and they will now sleep with one eye closed hoping they don’t die in their sleep. 

It has never been this bad!. 

Nigeria’s rising debt, which is being accelerated by subsidy payments that have been compounding the nation’s economic situation, is increasingly becoming a cause for concern to both people and organizations. With the impact tearing through people and industries as inflation rises, more organizations are joining the call to the federal government to curtail it.

BudgIT has joined the chorus of organizations expressing concerns over the impact of borrowing and subsidy payments on the fiscal performance of the federal government’s 2022 budget.

On Monday, the civic-tech organisation said in a statement signed by Iyanu Fatoba, assistant head, media and communications, that Nigeria’s economic misfortune has deteriorated over the last eight months.

Nigeria’s total debt, including the central bank’s Ways and Means Advance, stands around N61 trillion and is likely going to increase as the subsidy payments continue amidst dwindling revenue.

BudgIT said the most pressing concern is the debt service-to-revenue ratio, which has reached alarming levels within the first four months of 2022.

The organization cited the 2022 fiscal performance report released last week, which indicated that Nigeria is now borrowing to pay debt. The report noted that in the first four months of the year (Jan-April 2022), Nigeria generated N1.64 trillion, whereas it spent N1.94 trillion, N310 billion more than its generated revenue, on debt servicing.

According to the statement issued by BudgIT, “This is in spite of warnings given by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that Nigeria would be spending over 100 percent of its revenue on debt service in 2026. Unfortunately, those predictions are Nigeria’s current realities.”

The organization lamented that debt servicing is not only worsening the nation’s poverty situation, but it is also gulping budgetary allocation for capital expenditures for key sectors such as education.

“Recall that BudgIT, in a consultation memo released in February 2022 titled: ‘Leveraging budget reforms for economic development,’ had articulated several reform issues bordering on Nigeria’s public financial management regime that affect the very core of governance, separation of powers, expenditure efficiency, and the livelihoods of millions of Nigerians; 83 million of whom live in extreme poverty.

“Four months later, some of those same challenges exist, with additional ones, if not properly managed, may spell fiscal crisis for an already impoverished nation. In particular, the debt service spending is only N93.6 billion less than the combined total personnel and capital expenditure for the period under review. Also alarming are the expenditure targets for the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), which have only been 15 percent (of the total N5.10 billion naira) for the period under review.

“There is no gainsaying that the fortunes of the most populous black nation on earth, Nigeria, have worsened in the last 8 months after the 2022 budget was passed,” it said.

Gabriel Okeowo, BudgIT’s country director, said the government needs to discontinue indiscriminate borrowing to fully implement the budget that Nigerians have counted on to ease their economic woes.

“It is in light of the above that we call on all well-meaning Nigerians, CSOs, media, the private sector, the international community, and reformers to join the call for the federal government to do the following: discontinue indiscriminate borrowing through ways and means, which is creating a ballooning set of interest payments, running parallel to the external debt, as well as increasing the money supply and creating more monetary volatility; check the oil theft that is now commonplace in the petroleum industry, and has encumbered the country’s ability to meet its production quotas-the latter having fallen to 1.25 million barrels as at May 2022,” the statement added.

The civic-tech group also made recommendations for the government.

“Ramp up the remittance of operating surpluses by MDAs and GOEs to boost FG’s independent revenues, which is currently underperforming, and take considered action to reform subsidy, this achieves the twin objectives of having citizen buy-in and revenue savings that are channeled into priority areas,” it said.

While the current situation bites harder, the federal government is yet planning to take further N4 trillion loan to address subsidy-induced budget shortfalls. With the revenue plummeting due to government’s inability to cash in on the oil windfall, Nigeria is likely to continue borrowing to service debt