Head of Transitional Council
Shonekan was a seasoned and proven businessman with a wide network. His proven abilities and political neutrality made him a prospective leader for Babangida's council of civilians-run government, a government which was in the midst of economic turmoil and later came to a political crisis. On January 2, 1993, Shonekan assumed office as the head of government affairs under the leadership of the military president Babangida. At the time, the transitional council was designed to be the final phase leading to a scheduled hand over to an elected democratic leader.
Shonekan learned of the dire condition of government finances, which he was unable to correct. The 1993 budget was pegged to include a 28 billion naira deficit with little money left in its foreign reserves. The government was hard pressed on debt obligations and had to hold constant talks for debt re-scheduling.
Improvements were underway. The Armed Forces Ruling Council had designed a realistic two-year economic program. The program's outline called for reducing the petrol subsidy, to bring in 65 billion naira to government coffers. A modification of VAT was also in the works and a plan to inculcate fiscal discipline. By the end of June, following the cancellation of the June 12 presidential elections, the Nigerian nation was engulfed in political turmoil. Fiscal discipline was not heeded, and the government exceeded the deficit target by the beginning of the second quarter. By August 1993, Babangida decided to step aside and install an Interim government.
Read more about this topic: Ernest Shonekan
Famous quotes containing the words head of, head, transitional and/or council:
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice or wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“An old superstition: If the house is filled with dread, place the beds at head to head.”
—Willis Cooper, and Rowland V. Lee. Maid, Son of Frankenstein, explaining to Mrs. Frankenstein why the bedroom is arranged as it is. (1938)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“Parental attitudes have greater correlation with pupil achievement than material home circumstances or variations in school and classroom organization, instructional materials, and particular teaching practices.”
—Children and Their Primary Schools, vol. 1, ch. 3, Central Advisory Council for Education, London (1967)