Early in the week, the 2016 budget was trending on twitter with the hashtag #Budgetofcorruptison as Nigerians pointed out various instances of padding, repetition of line items, and in some instances, the same item carrying vastly different price tags in the document. Rather than the promised change, Nigerians believe that like his predecessors, President Buhari and his ministers simply surrendered the process of preparation of the budget to the bureaucrats who simply went on to do what they know how to do best. Some of the allocations considered ridiculous by Nigerians in the budget proposal include the allocation of N6.6 million for purchase of computers for the Federal Ministry of Health while the sum of N297 million was allocated for procurement of printers in the same ministry.

There was the N1 billion allocation for purchase of chairs and tables in the Ministry of Communications, N30.8 million for payment of State House rent, while allocations for the Zungeru Power Plant appeared in six line items, totalling N1.3 billion in the budget. Also, the sum of N6.7 billion was allocated to 116 different agencies of the Federal Government for purchase of computers in 2016 while 84 other federal government agencies got N13.4 9 allocation for purchase of computer software.

Also, the sum of N1.6 billion was allocated as cost of budget preparation to 116 Federal Government agencies and parastatals. This has led to questions of whether the money will be paid to consultants or the civil servants. Also being questioned is the N759 million allocated to the Federal Ministry of Solid Minerals Development for website development.

In the Ministry of Transportation, it seems as if it is going to be anniversaries and celebrations galore in 2016 as a whooping N109 million was budgeted for the purpose while the sum of N33 million was allocated for sports in the same ministry. In the same vein, the Ministry of Communication Technology proposed N585 million for the purchase of chairs and N415,500,000 for the purchase of tables with another allocation of N2.9 billion for unspecified equipment and accessories.

Lai Mohammed: Complained about millions of naira allocated for computer purchase in some parastatals in his ministry

The Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation was allocated an unexplained N1.71 billion for “security equipment, even though it got N316.42 million for the same purpose in 2015. The office was also allocated the sum of N396.79 million for rehabilitation/repair of “electrical components” N181.28 million for “computer software acquisition,” though it was allocated N107.58 million and N580 million for the same purpose in 2015 and 2014 respectively.