Tinubu’s ‘budget 2024’: Matters Arising

The deepening pall of despair following uncertainties over the misfortunes of the Nigerian economy under the immediate past administration of President Muhamadu Buhari, and which was inherited by the yet to settle administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, may have denied a wide cross section of Nigerians the optimism that should come with the knowledge that the country is in a budget season to birth the 2024 federal budget. This is not surprising given the complement of twists and turns that had marked the exit of the preceding dispensation and trailed the advent of the President since his inauguration on May 29 2023. Hence even the prospects of change that comes with a new budget suffered mute response by Nigerians.

Yet beyond whatever has transpired around his ascendancy, the fact remains that he is now president, and Nigeria needs him to get to the brass tacks of managing the country as a business - including that of fashioning a budget – his first ever at the federal level, to drive governance in 2024. Essentially, the budget dispensation provides the opportunity of reviewing present and past socioeconomic circumstances in one vein, as well as repositioning same for the future in the other. And from all indications, that process had been ongoing since August 2023, when the Budget Office issued a Budget Call Circular to all MDAs to work towards making the President, present the 2024 budget to the National Assembly in October.

The dispensation of the 2024 budget is most significant given that Tinubu’s campaign peg for turning the country around on the platform of bidding ‘Goodbye to Poverty’ as was his campaign slogan, is the economy. This is also talking about his campaign manifesto which is the ‘Renewed Hope’. It also needs to be recalled that his campaign agenda was inspired by the prevailing, dour socioeconomic state of the country as it was at the precipice of a literal meltdown. Trending laments by country men and women have been over the deepening state of economic distress, ever worsening wave of insecurity with Nigerian street and highways proving unsafe to appear on, and impunity as well as corruption ravaging government circles. In fact, one of the positives that contributed to Tinubu’s electoral victory, was the toast to his reported tenacity in confronting administrative challenges, as he demonstrated during his earlier stint as the Executive Governor of Lagos State.

Against the backdrop of the foregoing however, looms the question of what expectations Nigerians should nurse in the 2024 budget on one hand, and what they may in reality, get. For while Nigerians may be expecting Eldorado from the Tinubu administration, the realities on ground may allow only a limited manifestation of such. This has been the real life-long experience of the wider cross-section of Nigerians even before Tinubu’s advent, and which manifests in the perennial syndrome of crashed hopes for generations of the citizenry.

With his coming on board, Tinubu has with his gift of oratory and advocacy, lifted the hopes of millions of Nigerians. Added to this plus for him, he has also been striving to consolidate his grip on the establishment with a systematic manning of his governance mechanism, thereby building confidence that his tenure will make a difference. Against the trite knowledge that governance of a country is not a one-man affair—even if such is the president or a potentate with omnibus powers, he or she in authority, needs a supporting team. And by implication, the quality of the individual members of the supporting team for a leader matters a lot as such defines the success or failure of the designated leader. Proceeding along such line, in must be admitted that the President has assembled a team whose cross section features several men and women of sterling pedigree that, even if his detractors may succeed in excoriating him unduly, the integrity of his team tips the balance in his favour.

It is therefore in the light of such a backdrop that expectations of Nigerians with respect to the 2024 budget remain most illuminated. Nigerians expect relief from the strangulating complement of skyrocketing prices of goods and services, fuel shortages, rising insecurity and brutish levels of criminality just to mention a few. And the emerging scenario is one of mixed fortunes for the country, as hardly does the Tinubu administration possess a magic wand to turn things around in a short time.

For clarification, the 2024 budget is coming with an ambitious expenditure of N26.01 trillion which is equivalent to $34 billion at a conversion rate of N700 per dollar. The oil price assumed by the budget package is $73.00. These are all parameters that tally with legitimate assumptions with respect to Nigeria’s budget tradition.

The caveat of concern is in respect of the growth rate of 3.76% which is projected for the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2024. Considering that the economy grew in real terms by 2.51% by the second quarter of 2023 which is a drop from the 3.54% during the comparable period in 2022, a projection of 3.76% for 2024, presents the administration in indulging in make believe. Is the administration telling Nigerians that much has changed or will change between now and the end of next year, to justify the projection?

Granted that real growth in an economy comes from the expansion of economic activities in economy, can the administration assure Nigerians that by 2024 the country would have overcome the array of challenges such as the rehabilitation of the ailing refineries, revamped the real sectors of the economy, and tamed the other monsters keeping Nigerians sleepless both day and night.

The truth of the matter is that the projection of a growth rate of 3.76% for 2024 fiscal year, conjures such an unrealistic rendering of the country’s socio-economic circumstances, and remains just a claim by the Tinubu administration. This, discerning Nigerians may not take seriously, as such simply mirror the despicable tendencies of the past of promise and fail by successive governments.

Is this what the Tinubu team expects of the public response to its proclivities? Hopefully not.