Inside President Buhari’s budget of sleaze and corruption
Editor’s note: Bukola Saraki, the Senate president, says the 8th Assembly is committed to passing a budget Nigerians will be proud of. President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered to probe any questionable allocations in the 2016 budget. Osilama Okuofu, the Naij.com author, says the president’s recent efforts to be as transparent as possible about the issues surrounding the budget are commendable but still do not change the fact that corruption has permeated the government.
Never in the history of budgeting, at least of recorded memory, has so much dust been raised as the one presented for National Assembly deliberation and passage by the Buhari-led APC government.
When President Muhammadu Buhari stood before Nigerians in the hallowed chambers of the country’s upper legislative arm to present the 2016 appropriation bill of over six trillion naira, many hailed it as bold and ambitious. Even this writer praised it as an opportunity to improve on our decadent physical infrastructures very relevant to our pursuit of economic advancement.
But hardly had the president walked out of the chamber before claims and counter-claims of missing budget and game-playing reared their heads. There was confusion and unbelievable uncertainty in the polity on a matter so mundane, even a permanent secretary in the finance ministry could have done the presentation. But that was a taste of what was to come!
When finally the “missing” budget was “found,” jaw-dropping figures sprang at the legislators who just could not believe the level of padding in the budget, all in an attempt to institutionalise sleaze, had the bill been passed and signed into law, by very corrupt and disingenuous Nigerians under the watch of a much vaunted, internationally acclaimed anti-corruption czar leading Nigeria’s all-new “government of the progressives”.
Inside the budget
Some of the figures and items are so unbelievably insulting to the intelligence of Nigerians. One wonders how the thieves who drew up the budget would expect any Nigerian, even with the most basic of knowledge, not to question rent payment in Aso Rock Villa built with tax payers’ money for the people of Nigeria, owned by them to accommodate their president and members of the presidency. Even former military president Babangida has asked to be told who the landlord is to whom that payment is meant for as he built the property. Nigerians are still awaiting a response.
Imagine billions of naira budgeted for renovating the very same property not long after huge sums were spent by the last administration shortly before handing over a few months ago. What could have gone so structurally defective to warrant such huge spending in a country where a huge number of able-bodied youths are jobless because of a dearth of industries to gainfully engage them?
Jaw-dropping sums were also earmarked for the purchase of computer anti-virus kits and other appliances you begin to wonder if Aso Rock Villa, Nigeria’s seat of power where heads of state and presidents have lived in for decades, is so poorly equipped like some village farm-house. But we all know for a fact that for a people so profligate and non-sacrificial when it comes to comfort, this cannot be the case.
Imagine also that ten billion naira was sneaked into the education ministry budget under the sub-head emolument! Emolument for what? What payment is a ministry that did not increase either staff strength or staff salaries expected to make to such tune? The minister for state education could not even defend his ministry’s budget. Ditto that for health who was so miffed he distanced himself and the ministry from what was before the legislators, requested for it to be retracted whilst the “real” budget is submitted at a later date for consideration.
Inside the government
If this is not a blight on the over-hyped anti corruption grandstanding of this president, it surely is a confirmation of his very well-documented administrative ineptitude. That the president of a country could stand before those who elected him, including the five percent who did not, and flourishly present this document and sign off on it calls to question his readiness to lead this country in dire need of optimum leadership quality necessary in the twenty-first century as gleaned from the developmental strides being achieved by some smaller, far less endowed countries as Nigeria.
That there is a thieving group of people within this government bent on continuing the culture of sleaze that has bedevilled this country now for decades is not in doubt. Nigerians voted for change, not continuity and change for the better is the minimum expectation which must be met and delivered on. It therefore shows that this cankerworm is not all about a political party that held sway for sixteen years as some lazily want to explain away, but something deep-rooted in our genetic mix which requires clinical transfusion of getting rid of the impure and bringing in the untainted.
All is good in a timely manner
To redeem the battered image of this less than one-year government of President Buhari and to restore the confidence earlier reposed on this president as the one well kitted to sanitise this country at this time, those behind this putrid budget must be arrested and prosecuted for crimes ranging from economic sabotage and institutionalisation of corruption because that is what it would have been had the document passed the National Assembly and Mr. Buhari appended his signature thus giving it legality. Imagine that! It is pertinent to state that these criminals would then not have been liable for prosecution because they would have operated within the ambit of the law. Talk about wasted talent!
One is happy that Mr. President has ordered that the budget be uploaded online now so that Nigerians can access it and become better informed. It shows transparency and accountability. However, my question is, where was he and his team of angels when the padding was taking place and the attempt to openly steal from long-suffering Nigerians who will bear the brunt of this tax-laden budget was being orchestrated? Flying round the world and not making them forget in a hurry how corrupt Nigerians are, probably!
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