Politics
THE Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Dr Chibuzor Okereke, has vowed to overhaul Nigeria’s budgeting and procurement systems if elected president in 2027.
Okereke, who stated this while featuring on the News Agency of Nigeria Personality Interview Series on Sunday in Abuja, said the current system being run cannot address poverty and under-development in the country.
“The envelop budgeting system being used cannot take the country out of the woods. We need a zero-based budgeting system if the country must catch up with developed nations,” he said.
According to Okereke, every item that gets into the zero budgeting system has a clear economic impact to be made and it can be verified.
“One thing to tackle is our budget, to address the issue of poverty. Nigeria has not been making workable budgets, and it is not a question of this government; we have never made workable budgets in this country.
“If you are doing a budget adopting an envelop system, you are not making budget that can drive economic development.
“Nigeria needs a zero-based budgeting system where every item that gets into that budget has a clear economic impact it is going to make, and that is what we are going to bring on board.
“You will not see the type of budgeting we are seeing in Nigeria since the First Republic to the Fourth Republic, which is making the government going back and forth.
“If you solve budgetary and procurement problems in Nigeria, you have solved almost 60 per cent of poverty and security crisis.
“We will not govern Nigeria by projects and programmes; we will govern Nigeria by vision,” he said.
Okereke said that if elected president, his government would focus on the well-being of Nigerians rather than just the geographical area called Nigeria.
The presidential candidate said that he would build a just and merit-based society, saying that this is a quicker way of addressing poverty.
According to him, one of the biggest problems in the country today is hopelessness.
“People do not believe they can get what is due to them without attachment to where they come from or who they know.
“For instance, when job vacancies are advertised, many job-seeking Nigerians will not apply because they believe that the jobs have already been given to preferred candidates.
“Whereas Nigeria cannot achieve reduction in poverty if some people have appointment letters in their pockets and they are willing to give them to those they know while other people don’t have that opportunity.
“We are returning the country to a place where people can go to NAN website or a newspaper website and find a job vacancy, apply and believe that they can get it.
“The other line to our “Nigerians First”, is “Believe Again”. This is to say that if you study nursing in Nigeria, it is not for the purpose of getting this certificate and running to foreign countries.
“Our projection is that you can acquire the certificate and practise here under the best condition of service, competitively like somebody who is abroad.
“We have even left the practice of studying paramedics and medical courses now to establishing private-based two week executive courses, just to prepare people and ship them abroad.
“That is capital flight; that is brain drain; that is a resource dissipation, and that will not help us to achieve anything,” he said.(NAN)
A.I
July 19, 2026
Tags: Dr Chibuzor Okereke