It is regrettable, that the absence of a more salutary impact from partial implementation of earlier budgets, has seriously eroded public expectation to make Nigerians, nonchalant about this annual constitutional requirement. Unfortunately, the unfolding drama surrounding the 2016 version of this critical annual event, may not also inspire public confidence that this year’s plan will positively touch our lives. Nonetheless, cynics may suggest that it is probably a deliberately programmed recipe for failure, if one consistently embraces any annual fiscal plan which invariably forfeits a quarter of the year before implementation commences.
Indeed in his recent interactions with Nigerians resident in the UK, Mr President had explained that several MDAs deliberately warehoused most of their capital vote until the fourth quarter, before they frantically adopted various strategies to evacuate the bountiful residual funds into personal accounts, with fraudulent invoices and waybills. File: Buhari during the 2016 budget presentation to the National Assembly. According to Buhari, the adoption of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) may have protected over N2 trillion from being corruptly siphoned into private pockets, by 31st of December 2015. Consequently, Mr. President suggested that the projected significant revenue shortfall of over N2 trillion may not require loans, as earlier proposed in the 2016 Appropriation bill. Buhari must be worried that the full implementation of the projected N6 trillion-plus budget, with over N2 trillion embedded deficit, would imply that the Federal Government would be compelled to allocate, well over the present inappropriate amount of 35kobo out of every Naira income, for servicing both the existing and new debts.
Evidently, no country’s economy can be safe or indeed prosper with such precarious application of precious generated revenue. Indeed, the existence of such an oppressive debt service burden probably should have advised a more responsible and sensitive fiscal plan, consciously designed to produce a balanced budget, so as to suspend further debt accumulation, which might endanger our sovereignty. It is unlikely that Buhari would gleefully endorse the present, highest ever projected deficit of over N2 trillion if the implications of such an oppressive debt service burden was thoroughly explained to him.
In fact, an unquestioned approval for such an oppressive financial burden is probably at cross purposes with Buhari’s renowned frugality and national pride. Consequently, some Nigerians were alarmed when Vice President Osinbajo initially flew the kite of a proposed N8 trillion budget; clearly, with crude oil trading below the $38/barrel budget benchmark, it would require over N4 trillion ($20bn) loan to fund such a budget, not minding that this would compel the odious allocation of over 50kobo of every Naira earned to servicing our national debts annually. Fortunately, Nigerians were spared this dismal prospect with a reduced fiscal plan of N6.1 trillion, even though such spending will inevitably still extend current debt service beyond the dis-enabling and distortional 40 kobo from each Naira generated revenue. Our debt burden would clearly become perilous, if persistent low crude prices should also instigate further deficit financing in 2017.
So the question, obviously is, why Buhari would so readily accommodate this heavy, debt laden fiscal projection in such an austere season? One expects that the budget figures President Buhari laid before NASS were determined between Jun-Dec 2015, presumably, after thorough and exhaustive consultations with stakeholders and the respective legislative committees responsible for MDA oversight. Sadly, these extensive consultations and the attendant delay for budget enactment, may not have been justified by the series of absurdities that gradually unraveled after a budget which was presented to the National Assembly, in the full glare of the World press, on December 22nd, was declared to be missing, less than four weeks later, in January 2016. A Presidential aide was subsequently fingered by the Senate for swapping the original budget document with a dirty copy!
Although, the Presidency never denied the allegations of budget fiddling, Buhari, nonetheless, on the 19th of January, sent a corrected version to replace the discredited budget copies with NASS. Sadly, a casual evaluation of the corrected version by the Legislative Committee, still threw up several inconsistencies.
Indeed, it soon became clear that some Ministers and MDA Management still fumbled when defending their respective Expenditure projections, especially when these were compared with historical allocations to the same Agencies in the previous three years. Alarmingly, the Health Minister, Prof Isaac Adewole, for example, disowned some contentious provisions in the budget proposal of his ministry, when he claimed that “ this was not what we submitted”; and therefore added that “we will submit another one. We don’t want anything foreign to creep into that budget” Adewole’s reaction definitely raises questions as to which version of the budget he sought to defend, and why the National Assembly’s copy was different, even after the NASS had received a so-called, corrected version from the Presidency.
Furthermore, the Health Minister confirmed that his ministry had nothing to do with a projected N3bn State House Clinic, which is a clearly lopsided projection, when compared with the paltry N2bn allocation to the development of new hospitals and clinics throughout the country. Consequently, Professor Adewole concluded, with regard to the State House Clinic projection, that “ I hope it’s not the same rats that changed things in our budget, that also changed the State House Clinic allocation”? Furthermore, the Senate Committee on Education have also reported that they had uncovered about N10bn that was hidden in the Ministry’s projected allocation for 2016; the Committee also wondered why parastatals attached to the ministry, continuously received rising allocation for personnel cost, while similar allocations for all federal schools and universities rose much more slowly? Indeed, there is nothing to suggest that the respective MDAs, have so far reconciled their allegedly controversial budget projections with the respective National Assembly Committees; thus, it is not yet really clear which budget NASS will now consider for Approval before the Easter break as they promised. The critical question, however, is whether NASS would also condone the obnoxious debt burden that a N2trn plus deficit with crippling service charges will bring upon our nation.
Besides, while addressing some Nigerians resident in Saudi Arabia, in February, President Buhari had condemned the distortion of the budget proposals by entrenched interests; the President insisted, according to his spokesman, that the “unauthorised alterations” had completely changed the document from the one he presented to the National Assembly. Thus, with the related controversy and the various revelations of inflated projections of fund allocations, and muti billion Naira spurious subheads smuggled into the 2016 budget, Buhari may have just kept his steel gates wide open for treasury looters to enjoy a bonanza year, if the N6 trillion plus 2016 budget is ultimately passed in deference to speed rather than a recognition of the predatory rats in the content of the 2016 Budget.
VANGUARD
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