Budget 2016 Crisis and Embedded Extravagance
The Permanent Secretary in the State House, Mr. Jalal Arabi was a pitiable sight at the National Assembly on Tuesday while struggling to defend the extreme self-indulgence embedded in the 2016 budget for the State House. How can a government of change rationalise N3.8 billion proposed expenditure on the State House Medical Centre, about N1.1 billion on the purchase of vehicles, N3.91 billion on rehabilitation/repair of office buildings and N89.17 million on restaurant/kitchen equipment for the State House at a time of austerity? It is very sad to note that the federal government is proposing to spend more on capital projects at the State House Medical Centre this year than for all the 16 teaching hospitals across the nation. Arabi also struggled to defend a scandalous N369.33 million for “Other Capital projects” in the State House. The SGF’s office was also assigned N181.28 million for “computer software acquisition.” Only God knows what the SGF’s office will be doing with N400.19 million for the purchase of vehicles in an era of economic recession. It is either the proposals for the maintenance of the Presidency were not properly scrutinised by those who should or it was done to swindle the nation.
The ludicrous State House budget proposals aside, the entire 2016 budget is already a cataclysmic document, with the National Assembly saying that the proposed February passage date was no longer feasible because of the “errors, ambiguities and rampant cases of padding” in it. Even the N6.08 trillion indicated as the total figure did not tally with the actual figure after auditing. The figures just didn’t add up. No wonder the lawmakers said they would require more time to clear the budget proposal of all its ambiguities, errors and false figures smuggled into it, so that in the end, “a budget that is acceptable to all can proceed from the National Assembly”.
Again, for the first time in the history of this country, ministers who came to defend their budgets were disowning figures read out by the lawmakers from the document submitted by the government. The first shock came from the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, who declared to the Senate Committee on Health that the ministry’s budget read by the committee was not the one drafted by him. According to Adewole, the provisions of the budget before the National Assembly was in contrast with the priorities of the health sector as contained in the original budget it prepared, adding that some of the votes earmarked by the ministry for some activities had been re-distributed, while some important fields had been excluded. Adewole declared: “In the revised budget as re-submitted, N15.7bn for capital allocation had been moved to other areas. Some allocations made are not in keeping with our priorities. There is nothing allocated to public health and family health. Over the last two years, nothing has been done on HIV. We have to look into the details of the budget and re-submit it to the committee. This was not what we submitted. We’ll submit another one. We don’t want anything foreign to creep into that budget. What we submitted is not there. We have not reached that stage and we find the money there.”
Even the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed openly disowned the N398 million voted for the purchase of computers for the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and the Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB). Speaking at a budget defence session before the Senate Committee on Information, Mohammed noted that the N398 million was strange to him. “No, that is not possible. That was definitely not what was proposed. This cannot be,” the minister protested even as an official of the ministry noted that only N5 million was proposed for the item in the original budget of the NFVCB.
To cap it all, our Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun was involved in a verbal war with the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Col. Hameed Ibrahim Ali (Rtd) during the budget defence in the Senate. Ali, who is obviously still suffering from military mentality, told her off, saying that he reports only to the president. So, is the Customs now an agency in the Presidency? Buhari should clear this mess. The Customs boss can’t be bigger than the finance minister. Again, Ali should sit down and think deeply about what Adeosun told him during the spat: “There is disconnect between revenue and imports; disconnect between imports and forex demand. The Customs must sit up, you can’t ask for salary increase for your men when you say we are broke.” This is food for thought.
In sane societies, those involved in the preparation of Budget 2016 would have resigned by now. Since they are yet to do so, I am using this medium to appeal to them to follow the alleyway of honour by resigning. Clearly, this team did a slipshod job on budget 2016.
As for our dear President Muhammadu Buhari on whose desk the buck stops, this mess of a document called budget 2016 speaks volumes about his competence, frugality and integrity.