Segun Ayobolu
MANY discerning analysts and contributors to public discourse have argued rightly that the Coronavirus pandemic offers Nigeria a critical opportunity to urgently press the reset button as regards her developmental goals, methodologies and trajectory. . There are indeed indications that an increasing number among the country’s political and socio-economic elite are increasingly more conscious, no thanks to the virus, of the need for the country to fundamentally change track, particularly in terms of governance style, structure and values, if Nigeria is to begin to meet her developmental aspirations and promote the wellbeing of the vast majority of her people over six decades after independence.
A number of elective and appointive public office holders at the federal and state levels, for instance, have had their salaries reduced, some by as much as 50 percent in response to the crisis. This is a noteworthy, tentative first step but does not even begin to scratch the surface of the problem. As this column has noted in the recent past, there is still, for instance, the issue of humongous and opaquely managed security votes of state governors to deal with. Happily the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has added its voice for the abrogation or considerable streamlining of security votes. The clamour should grow..
The drastic fall in global oil prices has badly decapitated the country’s single most important source of revenue earnings. Federal and state government finances are in a tailspin. Protracted lockdown, directly and indirectly, of huge swathes of the economy has not only affected negatively the tax revenue accruals to government but also compounded the already serious problems of unemployment and underemployment as most businesses have been forced either to shut down completely or to struggle on at less than half throttle. The federal and many state governments have drastically scaled down their 2020 budgetary provisions. Does this suggest a realization by the country’s leaders that it can no longer be business as usual in the management of scarce fiscal resources? The answer is yes to some degree but no if a closer scrutiny is made of the budgetary reductions.
For instance, as a result of the pandemic, the federal government has decided to reduce its 2020 budget estimates by N318 billion. Thus, it’s new revised budget proposal of approximately N10.6 billion. But then, in the new proposed budgetary estimates, the federal government still retains N100 billion for execution of the legislature’s Constituency Projects in 469 Senatorial Districts and Federal Constituencies. Yet, last year, President Muhammadu Buhari publicly lamented that the Constituency Projects had negligible impact on the welfare of the people. In his words then, “It is on record that in the past 10 years, N1 trillion has been approved for Constituency Projects, yet the impact of such huge spending on the lives and welfare of ordinary Nigerians can hardly be seen”.
Even if it is true that less than 70 percent of funds budgeted for Constituency Projects were released, is the huge amount still allocated for this purpose not an avoidable luxury in the face of the current health pandemic? This is particularly so as the budget for the Universal Basic Education (UBEC) and Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF), respectively, have been substantially cut. Explaining the cut, the Director-General of the Budget Office, Mr. Ben Akabueze, said, “The statutory transfers to UBEC and BHCPF are set by law at two percent and one percent respectively of the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF). Therefore, when the COVID-19 pandemic eroded the CRF, the budgetary provisions were automatically adjusted in accordance with the applicable laws”.
Sound as this rationale is, the truth is that laws are made for man and not man for laws. With the jolt to reality that the Coronavirus crisis has given us, the relevant laws should be expeditiously amended to allow for increased funding of the critical healthcare and education sectors. Provision for largely opaquely executed Constituency Projects is a luxury we cannot continue to sustain affordably. At a time like this, the health sector, education and infrastructure require all the resources that can be made available to them. There is no time more appropriate than now for more rigorous and disciplined prioritization of budgetary allocations.
Speaking on the allocation for the contentious renovation of the National Assembly complex, Mr Akabueze submitted, “The provision for renovation/retrofitting of the National Assembly complex in the revised budget is N9.25 billion , not N27 billion as being bandied around. The initial provision of N37 billion in the 2020 Appropriation Act for this was cut by 75 percent due to the impact of COVID-19 on government revenues”. Commendable as this cut is, the allocation to this project can still be eliminated completely at least for this year or substantially reduced further and whatever savings transferred to the health sector. Drastic times require no less drastic remedial measures.
But then, the internal intrigues and wrangling in the Senate, for instance, as regards the revised budgetary proposals from the executive, reveal that, despite the frightening reality of Coronavirus, not much has changed in the attitudes and values that undergird the budgetary process in Nigeria. This newspaper reported that during its executive session to debate the proposed revised budget, there was a row among Senators over perceived lopsidedness in allocation of the Constituency Projects funds with some Senators benefiting to the detriment of others.
According to the report, “The session became rowdy when Senator Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed (Binani) observed that the allocation of N200 billion Constituency Projects in the budget was lopsided and unfair to most senators. She exposed how some senators took undue advantage of being in privileged committees, especially appropriation, to allocate projects worth between N10 billion and N12 billion to themselves while some senators got between N300 million to N500 million projects for their districts. Another senator, according to her, got N5 billion project for his district”.
The report continued, “The implication is that projects meant for many Senatorial Districts have been diverted by the said senator. This development has caused disquiet and we are suspecting the padding of the 2020 Budget by the same clique because some allocations to some MDAs are questionable. In some cases, the budget proposals of some MDAs were increased for no just cause”. So it is still the question of budget padding, diversion and arbitrary increases in Y2020 and despite the Coronavirus emergency? This certainly is not the way to activate Nigeria’s reset button for accelerated development.
No less interesting is the reported allocation in the revised budget of the sum of N2.2 billion for foreign and local travels of President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. While the President has an allocation of N1.7 billion for this purpose, the office of the Vice President has N548 million. This is said to be apart from the N124 million budgeted by the presidency for travels and another N2.8 billion stipulated for the overhead and travel costs of the presidential fleet. But were we not told during the campaigns for the 2015 elections that the presidential fleet would be drastically trimmed to cut governance costs? How come we still have an expansive presidential fleet on our hands that continues to constitute a needless drain on public resources?
Modest as the allocations to presidential travels may appear to be, it is still a substantial amount that can go into more productive use especially in this digital age when governmental leaders can do so much virtually thus reducing the cost and distraction of ceaseless travel. Many would consider the allocation to presidential travels as mere peanuts not worth worrying about because, as the late Professor Ayodele Awojobi put it in the Second Republic, most Nigerians have lost a sense of the magnitude and value of even one million Naira. Professor Chinua Achebe buttressed this fact in an essay published in 1983 when he pointed out that at the time he was writing, it was not yet up to one million days since Jesus Christ was on earth! Even now by my calculation, it is approximately, 737,300 days since Jesus walked our earth. We think now only in billions and trillions not even of Naira but of dollars. Well, Coronavirus is forcefully changing all that.
I am told that during his tenure as governor of Lagos State from 1979 to 1983, Alhaji Lateef Jakande never travelled out of the country even once. During his annual vacations, he would habitually retire to the Government Lodge at Badagry where he enjoyed his holiday in the company of scores of files. Yet, it was his administration that conceived and was well on the way to actualizing the path-breaking Lagos Metroline project, which was brutishly terminated by the military regime after the collapse of the second republic. We are not yet, unfortunately, on the path to pressing the reset button that the Coronavirus pandemic so compellingly demands of us.
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