[caption id="attachment_42154" align="alignright" width="400"] File photo: Buhari presenting his budget speech at the National Assembly[/caption] The Buhari administration came under fire of public opinion over its first budget proposal the same week it faced its first national dissent over increase in electricity tariffs. The honeymoon is gradually getting over for the APC administration as Nigerians demand for dividends of the change. AYORINDE OLUOKUN/ABUJA Like a pick pocket caught in the midst of the action, the less than 10 months old Muhammadu Buhari administration had no choice, but to admit that it had made a mess of its first Appropriation Bill. Charles Dafe, Director of Information in the Ministry of Budget and National Planning in statement on Tuesday blamed the distortions, controversial and bogus allocations in the spending plan essentially on two factors. One is the inexperience of the bureaucracy with the zero budgeting approach adopted by the Buhari administration to put the N6.08 trillion together. The zero budgeting format, Dafe said is vastly different from the “envelope system,” the bureaucrats were used to and which has been used to prepare then budget since 2003. The other factor, which many Nigerians will agree with, is “fraudulent activity,” of bureaucrats involved in the budget preparation, though the Ministry of National Planning and Budget spokesperson tried to evade elaborating on this in his statement. Nevertheless, he noted that the “ministry has zero tolerance for malfeasance and whenever any wrongdoing is alleged, it will be thoroughly investigated and sanctions will be applied.” The statement from the ministry came just as the National Assembly, through its Joint Committee on Appropriation told the nation that the errors contained in the spending plan are so grievous that it will take some time to correct them. The Committee therefore said passing the bill into law on 25 February as lawmakers in both chambers of the National Assembly had earlier promised was no longer possible as more time will be needed to fine comb the document. Nigerians had begun raising eyebrows over suspicious and outrageous allocations to frivolous line items in the budget proposal since it was first submitted to the National Assembly last December. Suspicions over the state of the spending plan deepened with the controversies between the Senate and the presidency over allegations that the original document submitted to the National Assembly has been surreptitiously switched for a new one. The controversies ended when President Buhari owned up in a letter to the National Assembly that he indeed withdrew the original budget document for minor corrections which did not affect the total sum appropriated in the bill. However, as revelations in the ongoing budget defence sessions at the National Assembly have shown, whatever corrections done in the document have not succeeded in redeeming it from reproach. This was evident when Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, appeared to defend allocations to his ministry last Monday. Looking through the allocations for his ministry, Adewole disowned the entire document as he informed lawmakers that the spending plans as originally proposed by his ministry and which was submitted to the Senate had been largely distorted. The minister insisted that his ministry would need to re-submit a fresh budget proposal to the Senate for consideration. “In the revised budget as re-submitted, N15.7 billion for capital allocation has 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,” said the Minister. “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,” Adewole added. Last Wednesday, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed also complained about the millions of naira allocated for purchase of computers in some parastatals of his ministry. Other ministers that have appeared before the various committees of the National Assembly have spoken in the same vein and the Appropriation Committee must have taken the deluge of complaints of paddings and suspicious allocations into consideration in its decision to defer the scheduled date for passage of the budget. Outside of the National Assembly, the 2016 budget proposal have become an object of derision on the social media networks as Nigerians point out allocations to line items which are clearly out of sync with the change promised by the All Progressives Congress, APC administration and especially, the frugal nature of President Buhari. Rather, the budget, as Nigerians are finding out is replete with fraudulent and frivolous allocations, designed to support the opulent lifestyle of public officials or outright theft of funds under bogus headings. The Buhari administration had continued the tradition of its predecessor of yearly allocations for procurements of furniture, software, kitchen equipment, computers and accessories, renovation of buildings, hospital equipment yearly as if the products which are supposed to be durable usually expired with the old year. It has also embraced the culture of humongous allocations for feeding. 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. [caption id="attachment_42155" align="alignright" width="400"] Lai Mohammed: Complained about millions of naira allocated for computer purchase in some parastatals in his ministry[/caption] 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. [caption id="attachment_42156" align="alignright" width="400"] Udo Udoma Appeals to National Assembly not to tamper with capital expenditure in the budget[/caption] Also considered outrageous by many is the humongous allocation to the office of the OASGF for the procurement of vehicles. For instance, the office was allocated the sum of N400 million for procurement of motor vehicles in the 2016 budget proposal. The office got N107.58 m in 2015 for the same purpose. While the Ministry of Information and Culture also proposed to spend N140.9 million for procurement of computers for National Troupe of Nigeria,, the total allocation for acquisition of computers by the Ministry of Science and Technology is N91,394,900. One of the proposals that has been a source of embarrassment in the budget is government plan to spend N3.8 billion as capital allocation to the State House Clinic, a stand-alone medical facility used by the President, the Vice President and the staff of presidential villa. In addition, another N3.21 billion was allocated for health equipment and supplies for the State House Medical Centre while in another line item, tagged “State House HQTRS” another N203 million was budget for drugs and medical supplies. Also baffling is the allocation of N322 million to link a cable to the drivers’ restroom in the presidential villa while another N213.8 was included for linking the one of the guest houses in the presidential villa to the generator house. Also, about N1 billion was allocated for installation of electrical fittings and switching boards in the State House in the budget. In contrast, the government proposed to spend the sum of just over N2 billion as capital allocation for construction of hospitals across the country in the budget. Under the State House HQTRS votes, N278 million is earmarked for the Maintenance of Office Buildings/Residential quarters despite the fact that the sum of N421.27 and N907.11 million were budgeted for the same purpose in 2015 and 2014 respectively. Also, President Buhari continued the culture of fascination for cars started by his predecessors with allocation of N599.01 million voted for procurement of motor vehicles, another N278 million to purchase buses and another N340 million for the purchase of cars, BMW and Jeeps. There is yet another N120 million allocation to buy 16-seater Toyota Hiace buses. The Nigerian Prison Service which budgeted N200 for feeding of a prisoner per day has allocated the sum of N500 million for capacity building, a clear testimony that the Buhari’s administration promise of ensuring that that resources are aligned with government’s priorities and allocated efficiently was observed in the breach in the preparation of the 2016 budget. Yet, many of such instances abound in the appropriation plan. BudgIT, a civil society organization devoted to making the Nigerian budget more understandable and accessible identified instances of N111.32 billion of suspicious wasteful spending in the proposed spending plan. This is made up of aggregations of allocations for travels, purchase of computers, software, budget preparations, office stationery/computer consumables, purchase of vehicles, monitoring and evaluations, rehabilitations/repair of office buildings, office rent and purchase of furniture and fittings in the budget. The organization further noted that if the funds are reallocated, it can help Nigeria build 27, 830 units of social housing, 550 MW power plant, provides eight million school desks/chairs for schools and even go a long way in the construction of N140 billion second Niger bridge which has been on government radar for over a decade. The mismatch between the avowed commitment of the Buhari administration to reduce waste in all aspects of national life has dampened the initial enthusiasm of Nigerians about the N6.08 trillion spending plan, with allocation of N1.8 trillion, or about 30 per cent for capital expenditure, is an improvement on the N557 billion capital vote of 2015. “The glimmers of hope are however overshadowed by a few other pitfalls such as government’s plan to spend almost N42.48 billion of the capital allocation budget on the procurement and purchase of office furniture and fittings, computer software and new vehicles,” BudgIT said in its analysis of the budget. The mismatch between the avowed commitment of the Buhari administration to reduce waste in all aspects of national life has dampened the initial enthusiasm of Nigerians about the N6.08 trillion spending plan, with allocation of N1.8 trillion, or about 30 per cent for capital expenditure, is an improvement on the N557 billion capital vote of 2015 While the Zero Based Budgeting Approach which the government has so much trumpeted emphasizes that each government agency will justify each line item in its budget before being allocated funds for it, there was no evidence that the Buhari administration followed this through in the preparation of 2016 fiscal proposal, noted the organization. “There is no fact to show that the proposed 2016 Budget was formulated on a zero based approach. More priority is admirably placed on Power, Works and Transport and Defence, but the vast majority of line items leave the impression that the level of scrutiny stipulated by Zero Based Budgeting techniques were not applied to the proposed 2016 Budget,” noted BudgIT. The observed lapses in the appropriation document has put the National Assembly in the saddle as the lawmakers seemed to have now taken on the task of rectifying the errors and fraudulent allocations in the bill. Going by the country’s past experience, there are fears that the lawmakers may also exploit the position to feather their own nests. As it has happened in the past, such alterations not usually ends up distorting the document, but derailing government’s intentions with its fiscal plans. Thus, it was gathered that the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, met with the National Assembly leadership earlier in the week to appeal to it not to tamper with the allocation for capital expenditure in the budget in whatever corrections it wanted to do in the document. The Minister repeated this appeal when he appeared before the joint sitting of the Budget Committee of National Assembly to defend his ministry’s budget. “We are in challenging times, we want to use the 2016 budget as a solution to our economic problems, especially the 30 per cent capital allocation component in the budget. We want to move from the past administration’s faulty traditional ways of managing our economy without development strides,” the Minister said. Reports indicated that the Federal Government has set up a committee to probe how some of the funny allocations got into the budget with the promise that those indicted will be punished. But the seemingly fraudulent allocations are just one of the problems confronting the appropriation plan. Key benchmarks like the oil price which was projected to sell at $38 per barrel is already proving to be unachievable. The glut in the global oil market has pushed the price of oil well below the projected price, thus jeorpardising the nation’s plan earning N820 billion of the N6.08 trillion budget proposal from the sale of the commodity. Achieving the projected 2.2 million barrels of oil production may also not be realistic given the continuous sabotage of oil facilities, divestments by oil majors and most importantly, lack of buyers for Nigerian crude which is already turning out to be a major disincentive to investments in the sector. Thus, the Buhari’s administration hopes of earning revenue of N3.8 trillion to fund the budget which already has inbuilt into it a deficit of N2.2 trillion is already in danger. There are fears that the failure to realize projected revenue, especially from oil sales may push the deficit in the budget close to N3 trillion especially if the National Assembly approved it in the present format. However, government has said the reforms of and appointment of new leadership for its key revenue earning agencies like the Federal Inland Revenue Service, IFRS and the Nigerian Customs Service, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation will help bring more funds into the purse to fund the budget. Also, government said the excess funds which government departments and agencies have before now been frittering away on frivolous expenditure which is now being raked in through the implementation of Treasury Single Account, TSA will also be used to fund the budget. Over N2 trillion, according to the Minister of Finance, have been raked in through the TSA already. In the same vein, though the exchange rate was fixed at N197 to one dollar in the budget, Nigerian currency is already selling at over N300 to the Greenback at the parallel foreign exchange market with strident calls for further devaluation of the naira. President Buhari has insisted so far that he will need more convincing to heed such calls which he had likened to “killing the naira.” The Buhari administration came under fire of public opinion over the shoddy preparation of its first budget proposal the same week it faced its first national dissent over increase in electricity tariffs. For the Buhari administration, the honeymoon seemed to be over as Nigerians are now demanding for the dividends of the change.