Ayorinde Oluokun/Abuja

President-elect Muhammadu Buhari will in addition to taking over the reins of Nigerian government Friday also inherit a lot of problems across all sectors. Here are the key problems and how the APC proposes to tackle them in its manifesto

While speaking at the opening session of a two -day policy dialogue on the implementation of the agenda for change organized by the All Progressives Congress, APC last Tuesday, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria Vice President- elect left no one in doubt the new government that will be led by Muhammadu Buhari fully appreciates the extent of the mess it will be inheriting when it finally takes over government on 29 May.

Top among the inheritance of APC from the President Goodluck Jonathan-led Federal Government as enumerated by Osinbajo is a whopping $60 billion foreign and domestic debt, gargantuan national poverty with estimated 110 million Nigerians in the bracket, and a comatose economy in which the nation has to spend 21 per cent of its 2015 budget on debt servicing. He said two- thirds of the 36 states in the country couldn’t pay salaries while the Federal Government is also borrowing to fund recurrent expenditure.

This magazine gathered that the policy dialogue is a confirmation of the intention of APC, which will assume reins of power this weekend to fully involve the party in the designs of policies unlike the situation with the outgoing government.

•Buhari, Osinbajo: Great tasks ahead

For most Nigerians battling with day to day grind of eking out a living in Nigeria which has been compounded in recent times by acute scarcity of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS otherwise known as petrol, the handover date cannot come early enough. The hope of most Nigerians who spoke to this magazine last week was that the petroleum scarcity problem will be one of the immediate concerns of the new President on assumption of office, especially since the outgoing President seemed indifferent about the matter.

Though an oil producing nation, Nigeria has over the years relied on imported products, subsidized by government to keep the price low to meet its domestic needs as a result of the non- functioning of its four refineries. Billions of dollars spent on Turn Around Maintenance, TAM of the four refineries by successive governments have so far failed to enhance the country’s refining capacity as the contracts were awarded to cronies of government.

Analysts however said for the new government, solving the fuel problem will be tantamount to walking a tight rope. This is because key to solving the problems of intermittent scarcity of petroleum products lies in solving the knotty riddle of subsidy which has not only become a major drain on the national treasury, but a major source of corruption. The current scarcity that has grounded social and economic activities in most parts of the country for instance is fuelled by controversies over the amount of subsidy to be paid to marketers by the Federal Government.

Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, the Minister of Finance, said early May that the government had paid the sum of N500bn as fuel subsidy to oil marketers within the last five months while they are still being owed a balance of N98billion. The amount is already far above the N145.2 billion provision for payment of subsidy on petrol and kerosene in the 2015 budget. Yet, the marketers, under the aegis of the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria and the Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association are insisting that the Federal Government still owed them not less than N200 billion, a figure that has been disputed by the Finance Minister.

The marketers, who lamented that the Federal Government had not called for a meeting with them over the disputed debt have vowed to stop importation of petroleum products into the country until the controversies over the debt is resolved.

This has raised fears that the increasingly worsening situation that has resulted into Nigerians paying as much as N300 for a litre of fuel, which ordinarily is N87, may continue until the new government takes over power this week. Indeed, it was reported that the marketers had written to the President-elect, seeking audience with him over the issue without any success. Analysts are worried that if the current trend continues, the country may end up spending over a trillion naira on the payment of petroleum subsidy like it did in 2011 when about N2 trillion, more than one third of the national budget was paid to the marketers.

A probe of the payments by the House of Representatives and a Committee set up by the Federal Government later revealed that most of the payments were fraudulent as the beneficiaries either did not import products for which they were paid or over estimated their imports.