I had been waiting in expectations to see the 2014 budget, as I quite seriously held a lot of hope for its content. Looking at the Nigerian economy that has profited from being rightly placed over the years, plus key economic reforms that have stabilised our once topsy-turvy economy, the time was right.
With the National Bureau of Statistics set to unveil new GDP figures after a rebase exercise that could see Nigeria leapfrog South Africa as Africa’s largest economy; as well as a looming change at the helm of the Central Bank of Nigeria in June 2014, with Governor Lamido Sanusi indicating that he may not seek re-election, the the stage all seemed set for the emergence of a new philosophy and ideology to the management of the Nigerian economy.
I expected a more bullish approach towards the government’s plans for 2014, hoping to see plans to set up massive infrastructure projects that could go along way in solidifying and redistributing the recent economic wealth that Nigeria has been experiencing (GPD) over the last few years.
There couldn’t have been a better time for the federal government to put its money where its mouth is as concerns its transformation agenda, by instituting an advanced road network, alternatives to road transport, improve health care service delivery, heighten security and generally better the lot of the common Nigerian.
Let’s put things in perspective, a focus on infrastructural development would essentially create millions of jobs all across the country and of essence birth a value chain that could have a serious multiplier effect on the economy. So, you can imagine my disgust, when I learnt the contents of the 2014 budget, which the government arrogantly christened ‘Budget for Job Creation and Growth’, having placed a paltry 27% for capital expenditure, while a massive 72% was to go to recurrent expenditure.
By some act that I honestly could not explain, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo Iweala said: “This budget is the Budget for Job Creation and Inclusive Growth, meaning that it’s a budget which will continue the President’s transformation agenda for several sectors of the economy. The budget is going to support the push in agriculture.”
I really do not know how we are expected to have a stable agriculture sector without a road network to bring products to the cities.
I commend the work done by Madam Okonjo Iweala but now believe that her time at the helm of the finance ministry is done; same also for Sanusi. I mean, we cannot continue to stabilise forever, creating policy after policy that is most efficient at widening the gap between the rich and the poor in Nigeria. The entire economic team need to visit the Ile-epo, Ojota, Ajah markets in Lagos to see that its trickle down economics is not working.
The questions on my mind are why have we stubbornly retained an over bloated and redundant workforce in the federal civil service? Why have we chosen to mortgage infrastructural development at the expense of meaningless travels, fumigation, feeding of dogs, just to mention a few? Why do we consistently play lip service to wanting to transform Nigeria, yet spend money on non-essential things?
In one of Sanusi’s statements from earlier in the year when he proposed that the federal civil service be cut by 50%, I put the maths and saw that right now we would have almost double what we have allocated for capital expenditure. In the 2014 budget, N1.372 billion was allocated for capital expenditure. If you were to halve the sum for recurrent expenditure, which is at N3.528 billion, we would free up an additional N1.764 billion, which would bring total capital expenditure to N3.136 billion.
It also bothers me that despite the unbundling of PHCN, which has now been sold to private investors, recurrent expenditure and the overall wage bill of the federal civil service increased. Why?
It is even more worrying that the so called ‘opposition’ do not find it important enough to scrutinise the budget and it would appear that they find nothing wrong with having such an insanely high recurrent expenditure bill in an environment sourly lacking infrastructure. It would seem that they are birds of a feather.
With this budget, I must say I have lost hope in this present administration’s effort to improve Nigeria as I see it lacks the moral will to do the needful to improve Nigeria. I hereby call on all Nigerians to raise their voices collectively to stand against such irresponsible spending within our government. This government seems not to care if its people die, as it continues to ride on the back of high economic growth, which is not as a result of its brilliance, but rather, that of the resilience of the Nigerian people, especially in the agricultural sector.
Nigeria is not for Goodluck, the PDP or the APC, it is for Nigerians, and it is paramount that Nigeria and Nigerians survive; all other factor can be eliminated.
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