It has become a yearly ritual for budgets to be proposed by the executive, approved by the legislature only for the implementation to proceed in a haphazard manner. The 2014 federal budget proposal is tagged a “Budget of job creation and inclusive growth.” In the past, we have had budgets appropriately named as those of consolidation, growth, hope, etc, but nothing changed after the budgets were implemented. Interestingly, it appears the appellation of the 2014 budget proposal is a response to the criticism of jobless growth and increasing alienation of the majority in an economy that is supposedly doing well. It is therefore imperative to find the links between the proposals for expenditure and the tag of job creation and inclusive growth in the budget.
It seems there are a lot of frivolities in the 2014 proposals. Let us take for instance the provisions for welfare. What exactly are welfare packages that come after provisions have been made for personnel expenditure, regular and non-regular allowances? It is the submission of this discourse that such a provision running into several billions of naira across the budget is a waste and cannot be a spur for inclusive growth. How on earth can anyone defend the allocation of N1.223bn to the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation for welfare packages? The same office also has N367.715m for subscription to professional bodies and N580m for computer software acquisition. Pray, how many professional bodies and how many persons are subscribing to these bodies? Computer software acquisition is a comfortable hide-out for the Ministries, Departments and Agencies seeking to get resources out of the treasury. And there is an allocation called “SGF19003831” for the sum of N250m.The meaning of this code and the purpose of the allocation are only known to the office and those who agreed to admit it into the budget proposal.
The National Identity Management Commission seeks the sum of N113.5m for maintenance and professional support services and another N137.5m for logistics support. These expenditure heads got N350m and N410m respectively allocated to them in the 2103 budget. But these are loose wordings that convey no specific meaning. For a commission that has yet to justify the huge public investment in it, these requests appear rather out of touch with reality. Not yet satisfied, the NIMC seeks N3.568bn for computer soft ware acquisition in 2014 while it got approval for N10.9bn in 2013 for the same purpose. The National Hajj Commission and the Christian Pilgrims Board are allocated N656.56m and N574.75m respectively. This does not include the N1.8bn set aside for pilgrimages in service wide votes. A nation that declares that it has no state religion is setting aside close to N3bn for pilgrimages which should be the personal religious affair of the pilgrims. And this is supposed to contribute to job creation?
The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission require N263m for the purchase of furniture and fittings. The Ministry of Niger Delta Affiars also requests N250m for the purchase of office furniture and fittings. Such insensitive requests show the mindset of our public officers. Who would require such sum in a private capacity to furnish a building?
The Code of Conduct Bureau seeks N120m for public enlightenment and N70m for rapid capturing of completed assets declaration forms. This is an agency that has failed to make meaningful contributions to the fight against corruption and abuse of office. Who is this enlightenment campaign for and what is this idea of rapid capture of completed forms that needs N70m? There is a new budget expenditure head in town. It is called annual budget expenses and administration. Why would any MDA be given a special vote to prepare its budget after the personnel expenditure on its accounting officer and finance officers? The Ministry of the Niger Delta Affairs requires N139.045m for office stationeries and computer consumables. This amounts to over N530,534 a day in 262 days of work in a year. The Pension Transitional Arrangements Department would require N204m for office stationeries and computer consumables. This would mean spending N778, 625 every day for the 262 working days in a year.
After the statutory transfer to the Independent National Electronic Commission, service wide votes provide for additional N21bn for election logistics support; N7bn for national dialogues and N5bn for sports development. Why should money for these expenditure heads come under service wide votes instead of being budgeted for the respective MDAs? Apart from the N150bn allocated as statutory transfers to the National Assembly, service wide vote sets aside N100bn for special interventions/constituency projects. In previous years, we have seen boreholes, town halls, motorcycles, tricycles, pepper, cassava and corn grinding machines, etc as the means of spending constituency projects. These are clearly not matters for the Federal Government and should ideally be handled, not by states, but by local government councils. But they will eventually resonate in the federal budget. This uncoordinated and haphazard approach to budgeting will neither spur job creation nor promote inclusive growth. Essentially, N250bn will be spent on the legislature and their related activities and dictates and how this will create new jobs is yet to be articulated.
The budget, under service wide votes, provides N83.6bn for conditional grants scheme, social safety nets and MDG projects. This does not take count of the money provided in SURE-P for similar activities. But there is no systematic mechanism to target those who need these interventions the most. After many years of these provisions, where are the beneficiaries that can stand out to be counted as being lifted to a new social status as a result of the disbursement of these funds. It is not enough for anyone to bandy figures and statistics. If poverty and unemployment are increasing while hundreds of billions are spent to tackle them, then something is wrong with the mechanisms and the methodology. They are failing to deliver.
Finally, there is over N39.6bn in service wide votes for the Niger Delta Amnesty Programmme. After so many years of appropriating hundreds of billions for improvement of the region, petroleum, gas and other infrastructure vandalisation is on the increase, oil theft is also increasing and there is no marked evidence of improvement in the life of the common people of the Delta. Crucially, the critical infrastructure in the region has yet to be improved with the East-West Road still uncompleted years after. It is therefore time to rethink this model of interventions in the Niger Delta. It is not working as the monies have not reached the poor and the poorest of the poor.
It is sad that budget preparation has been reduced to filling of templates used in previous years and the same requests are made repeatedly every year. The capital vote is low. It is a paltry 23.70 per cent of the overall expenditure is embedded in a lot of administrative capital. Every year, we utilise less than 60 per cent of the approved capital vote while we claim that we desire wealth creation and poverty reduction.
Nigerians were not created by God to suffer. They were created with full inalienable dignity to enjoy the fruits of the Earth. They are human beings like Mr. President, the senators, members of the House of Representatives, ministers, special advisers, etc. They are entitled to a standard of living that enables a life of decency and respect for their humanity. This is therefore to appeals to the members of the Seventh National Assembly charged with approving the 2014 federal budget to let my people go. The majority of Nigerians have suffered enough and do not need to be pushed further, lest they rebel. Rework this budget to become one that truly seeks job creation and inclusive growth.
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