Analysts knock Buhari over 2016 budget mess

As controversy over the 2016 Budget persists, some analysts have said that President Muhammadu Buhari must be squarely blamed for the alleged under-hand deals surrounding the document since it was first submitted to a joint session of the National Assembly.

President Buhari had on December 22, 2015, submitted a budget proposal of N6.07 trillion for the year 2016 to the National Assembly which was presided over by Bukoka Saraki, Senate president and his counterpart in the House of Representative, Speaker Yakubu Dogara, as required by the Constitution, which the President said was predicated on $38 per barrel oil benchmark; 197 Naira exchange rate at the time.

Barely a week later, it was alleged that the President secretly retrieved the document from the leadership of the NASS who were afraid to refuse the President’s request. The document was also said to have disappeared from the official website of the Budget Office.

The two chambers of the NASS, again declared on February 9 that the 2016 Budget was full of errors, and that the document could no longer be passed on February 25 as earlier promised, after its leadership had earlier claimed on resumption that it had no possession of the original document.

To further compound issues around the budget, Isaac Adewole, minister of Health, who addressed the Senate Committee on Health during his budget defence session, said the proposal drawn up by the ministry and submitted to the budget office had been doctored and that “foreign” appropriations, different from what was submitted, had been sneaked in.

In the midst of confusion over the budget, Buhari relieved Yahaya Gusau, director-general of Budget, of his appointment and replaced him with Tijjani Mohammed Abdullahi.

Oluseun Onigbinde, co-founder, BudgIT & Knight International Innovation Fellow (KIIF), said revelations so far had it that there were discrepancies in the budget which the government decided to clean up.

He said that what was approved at Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting was not the final budget sent to NASS and this has grave implications for the country, and that someone should have been prosecuted if the changes were willfully made.

“The buck stops at the President’s table. He should have appointed ministers early and allowed them have that width to prepare budgets. The budget was meant to be zero-based. This is an approach that requires at least 6 months. So, the current proposal was just assumptions of civil servants. With the items embedded, it is clear it had little to do with a well known policy framework or ministerial mandate. He should take the major blame and learn how to act faster. The way the budget was handled was too messy- zero based budgeting that did not get reception and late appointment of ministers,” he said.

He explained that with the sack of the DG, it can be rightly assumed most of the changes were unilaterally done at this point, and emphasised that the Federal Government needed to take the budget back and clean it up.
“The corrective exercise will not take more than two weeks. Phrases such as vehicles, research and development, evaluation should be avoided. There should also be deep-down definition of items for proper costing. This is also an opportunity to review the budget process and cost definition,” he said.

“The sack of DG, is a decision that has to be made. Someone has to take the blame but I insisted when the former DG was appointed that you can put an established person in such sensitive position if you understand that budgeting is the critical vehicle for resource allocation. This is critical to the Change Agenda that they have. The President has some blame also. He appointed ministers too late, giving them too little time to set policy, mandates, baseline reviews and decide budget allocations,” he said.

According to him, in the entire budget fiasco, honesty was lacking; with the President’s spokesmen continuously saying that the budget has been given to NASS whereas two copies of the budget were with the lawmakers.

“It was confusing. There were changes in the budget that should have been acknowledged. Possibly, another FEC session to ratify such but it ended up in a mess. The budget was not properly scrutinised and it was clear that the gap were just too evident.

“Most ministers started work fully in November. For what is meant to be zero-based budget, it is impossible.

Nigerians have to take the budget serious and stay ‘awake’, keeping their eyes on implementation. It is also a period to look deep down into the figures and ensure that no amount prone to fraud or waste of funds is left in the budget. The government needs to do more,” he told BDSUNDAY.
Yahaya Maikori, president, Gaming and Association of Nigeria (GAN), said if this type of brazenness in handling national budget can take place under the regime of change, Nigerians can imagine what obtained previously, and that it simply highlights the faulty foundation under which the Nigerian economy has been administered in the past.

He said if there is genuine intention, the government can go further by fishing out perpetrators who smuggled strange items into the document and the racketeering made it obvious that the budget office like other parts of Nigeria is swimming in corruption.

He explained that it is difficult to know who to blame for the controversy that have hitherto plagued the 2016 Budget document because all manner of accusations have been leveled against the NASS for being complicit in budget inflation and fraud.

“These are some of the loopholes that have been used over time to pilfer our commonwealth. So what are the real issues? The issues are that of corruption and ineptitude, which is endemic in Nigeria. So the sack of DG, Budget Office, is the right direction, at least, it sends a clear message to all public servants to take full responsibility for their jobs,” he said in an interview with BDSUNDAY.

According to him, the Presidency will have to take a cue from this- to never take Nigerians for granted, saying that Nigerians must also agree that change doesn’t happen in an instance.
“Change is a gradual process and we simply need to support the President so that we can move away from the past. I am sure that you have heard of the ‘budget mafia’? If a forensic review of each of the agencies is carried out, waste, forgery, abuse, etc will be discovered. For the budget office, it was simply ‘business as usual’. Ironically, the budget was tagged ‘the budget of change’ yet the complaints we have made about previous budgets were wholesomely duplicated in the form of fraudulent/frivolous allocations, which are clearly meant to support the opulent lifestyle of public officials. Many of the allocations were repeated, over-priced, stuffed or showed obvious misplacement of priorities,” he said.

He noted that in spite of the obvious defects of the budget, the interest of Nigeria should be paramount and that it’s in the news that both the executive legislature have been meeting to harmonise some of the grey areas with the hope of passing the budget in March.
Adeleke Adedipe, former general manager, Corporate Security of Shell Nigeria, said Nigerians should not be surprised by the controversy surrounding the 2016 budget because anything is possible under the sun, especially in Nigeria where the civil service is outright corrupt and decadent; and postulates two possibilities which are: error due to negligence or lack of thoroughness and dedication and deliberate criminality with intent to defraud.

“My guess is that the latter is more plausible than the former. The way forward is a retraction of the budget document with a view to expunging the illegal inclusions. Since Yahaya is the most senior (last) civil servant to check the correctness of the budget document, he should have honourably resigned and not wait to be sacked. So, his sack for me is a welcome development. I commend the NASS for spotting the difference and bringing it to public” Adedipe said.

 

NATHANIEL AKHIGBE