Showing posts with label Udoma Udo Udoma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Udoma Udo Udoma. Show all posts

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Budget 2016: Zero Brianed Concoction

 By Magnus Onyibe
To save face, it is the case that something or somebody must be blamed whenever something goes awry with a project or policy in a public or corporate sector organization. That explains why, Zero Based Budgeting, ZBB, which is the latest policy innovation of government aimed at arresting corruption in the public sector, is the ‘fall guy’ of budget 2016, as it were.
*President Buhari presents the 2016 Appropriation to the National Assembly 
To douse the tension raised by the unsavory discoveries in the proposed 2016 appropriation bill, the Budget and National planning minister, Udoma Udo Udoma, has opted like a good lieutenant to shield President Muhammadu Buhari from the darts being thrown at him as a result of the unfolding budget fiasco.
With ZBB being held up as the culprit, Minister Udoma is absolved from blame; President Buhari is protected and the civil servants are covered, but the citizens are suffering untold hardships as the budget which calls for greater scrutiny, is now bogged down at the National Assembly, NASS, much longer than the initial February deadline.
Legislators who are reneging on their earlier pledge of speedy passage of the 2016 appropriation bill before the end of February are justified in their decision. This is because the chaff has to be sieved from the seed of the highly bastardized budget to allow the long suffering Nigerian masses enjoy optimum benefits of the resources of the country whose potentials have remained in pendency.
Assuming the complexity of ZBB truly is the cause of the disaster that has befallen budget 2016, is ZBB also responsible for the shoddy, if not shady manner in which the budget was sneaked out of NASS for amendment ostensibly by the presidential adviser on National Assembly, Senator Ita Enang? How about the discovery by the committee on judiciary that the provision for Investment and Securities Tribunal, IST, in the 2016 budget is exactly a replication of the 2015 document? Is what happened to the IST budget not evidence of the continuity of the erstwhile envelope pushing budget system said to have been replaced in the 2016 budget with ZBB which compels creating a budget from ground zero?
Aside the discovery of about N10bn as fictitious provision for a strange budget head in Education Ministry, legislators have also rejected the same ministry’s budget as being completely different from what Mr President presented to the parliament.