By Femi Aribasala |
When the incredible issue of a missing/counterfeited 2016
budget arose some weeks ago, I was expecting to hear from the All Progressive Congress
(APC) that Goodluck Jonathan was to blame. Surprisingly, that did not happen.
Instead, blame was traded between the presidency and the national assembly,
seemingly forgetting that both organs of government are now controlled by the
same APC.
The stock-in-trade of this government is to blame Goodluck
Jonathan for everything. If there is petrol shortage: Jonathan is to blame. If
there are power cuts, Jonathan is to blame. If there Boko Haram killings,
Jonathan is to blame.
This government has apparently not yet heard the aphorism
that: “the buck stops with the
president.” Nine months down the road from his inauguration, the president
continues to pass the buck to Goodluck Jonathan. Then came the defining issue
of the 2016 budget.
Mr. President did not just send the budget to the National
Assembly, he presented it himself with great fanfare and bells and whistles.
This was supposed to be his signature proposal. With seven months squandered
ostensibly trying to get a cabinet of saints and angels who turned out to be
the same old same old, many with corruption allegations hanging over their
heads; the budget was expected to provide redemption for the government.
*President Buhari presenting the 2016 Budget |
It would provide a bold new start to the government’s
much-heralded “change” with a N6 trillion “zero-based” proposal that would defy
Nigeria ’s
austere economic circumstances, and put us firmly on the launch-pad to economic
recovery and diversification.
This makes it all the more perplexing that the 2016 budget
has turned out to be the biggest blunder of this government in a catalogue of
blunders that has now come to define it. I am still waiting for those who voted
for APC to admit they blundered royally. In their blunder, they have given us a
government that keeps going from one blunder to another.
We did not need Olisa Metuh, the opposition spokesman conveniently
padlocked by the EFCC, to expose the blunders in the 2016 budget proposals.
Different government spokesmen have competed to distance themselves from it as
much as possible. Charles Dafe, Director of Information, Ministry of National
Planning, blamed the blunders in the budget on the government’s insufficient
knowledge of the zero-based budgeting. Who is to be held responsible for this
ignorance? Surprisingly, Dafe forgot to mention Goodluck Jonathan.
Isaac Adewole, the Minister of Heath, also forgot to blame
Goodluck Jonathan. Instead, he maintained: “rats
invaded Nigeria
Budget documents and smuggled in foreign items.” You may well ask who was
supposed to buy rat poison. Did Goodluck Jonathan forget to hand it over on his
departure?
Lai Mohammed, the past-master at blaming Goodluck Jonathan
for everything, could not blame Jonathan for once. The man who promised to hold
365 carnivals in 365 days in 2016, and was awarded a budget allocation bigger
than the Ministry of Agriculture, openly disowned the government’s “budget of change.” Apparently, someone
had gone ahead to change a number of the items in it; much in the spirit of the
APC’s highfalutin change mantra. Among them, the N5 million proposed for buying
computers for the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and the Film and Video Censors
Board mysteriously became N398 million.
*Jonathan and Buhari |
The Ministry of Education was also unable to scapegoat
Goodluck Jonathan. Instead, a fictitious N10 billion that showed up in its
figures was attributed to a “typographical error.” That just might qualify as
one of the most expensive typos in the history of Nigeria . But how can N10 billion be
a typo when it should not even be there at all? Was it N1 billion they were
trying to put that mistakenly became N10 billion? Or was it N10 million? What
difference does it make when no one can even tell us what the money is meant
for?
How come a significant amount of these so-called errors
have to do with the presidency itself? What error accounts for the N3.8 billion
allocated for capital projects at the State House Clinic meant for the
president, vice-president and their families alone; compared to the N2.6
billion allocated for all the 17 government teaching hospitals nationwide. How
come the amount budgeted for feeding the president is more than sufficient to
feed entire villages for years?
There is really no point in itemising the bogus anomalies
in the budget because they are just too many. But a few examples should
exemplify just how ludicrous they are. In the president’s so-called budget for
change, N259 million is allocated for buying tyres, batteries, fuses and other
whatnots for the cars in the presidency. N27 million is allocated for buying
c-caution signs, fire-extinguishers and towing-ropes.
Spurious sums in excess of N100 billion are included
repetitively. Bogus costing of N53.7 million is repeated 52 times; while those
amounting to N37.8 million appear over 369 times. In some cases, the purchase
of the same vehicles, computers and furniture are replicated 24 times to the
tune of N46 billion. N795 million is set aside just to update the website of
one ministry, putting to shame the amount alleged to have been used for
Babatunde Fashola’s infamous website while he was governor of Lagos State .
In short, Buhari took five months to choose ministers. He
had eight months to prepare a budget. Nevertheless, he ended up by presenting
one of the most bogus and fraudulent budgets Nigerians have ever seen. That is
the change we can surely do without.
Other changes have only entrapped law-abiding Nigerians.
The daughter of a friend of mine, C.Y. Ogunseye, was getting married in the United States .
He travelled abroad expecting to make use of his Nigerian credit card. After he
got to Chicago ,
Buhari made changes that pulled the rug from under his feet. His credit card
had become invalid, to all intents and purposes. Clearly, no one in the
presidency put a human face to the changes they made, which might have made
them ease Nigerians into the new policy so that people like C.Y. already abroad
are not caught in the lurch.
Another friend of mine, Pamela Mommah, has a daughter in
university in Belgium .
Since Buhari came in, it has become near-impossible to pay her school-fees. Now
we are told overseas school-fees have been placed on the CBN’s foreign-exchange
prohibitive list. The monies for them will now have to be sourced from the
parallel market. The president had promised to make the naira equal to the
dollar while asking for our votes. Now that he is president, the naira is in
free fall. It has depreciated by over 50 percent since the inception of his
presidency – from N225 to N335 to the dollar.
The same president who recently went outside the country
on a five-day sabbatical which possibly included a medical check-up, has also
included buying foreign-exchange officially for overseas medical treatment on
the prohibitive list.
*Diezani Allison-Madueke |
As if these blunders were not enough, the vice-chancellors
in 12 of the universities established by Goodluck Jonathan were summarily
dismissed by the government, replaced by new government appointees. This has
become another example of the government becoming a law unto itself.
Vice-chancellors are tenured. That means they cannot be
removed before the expiration of their term without a prima facie case of
incompetence or dereliction of duty, and even then only on the recommendation
of the board of the university’s governing council. But the government not only
sacked the VCs without board approval, it sacked the boards before sacking the
VCs.
Having done this, it then replaced the VCs in a manner
completely contemptuous yet again of Nigeria ’s federal structure. Four
out of the twelve newly-appointed VCs are from Kano
University alone; an action clearly in
violation of Nigeria ’s
federal character principle.
Since the inception of the Buhari administration, all we
have been hearing is corruption, corruption, corruption. The president insisted
he would kill corruption before it killed Nigeria . Therefore, we all expected
the government to come up with steps designed to kill corruption; something no
nation on earth has ever done before. However, instead of even attempting to
kill corruption, the government has merely been determined to kill the PDP.
So what is the state of corruption in Nigeria today?
By all account, it is hale and hearty, thank you very much. All that has
happened is that the baton of corruption has been passed from the PDP to the
APC. One example here should suffice.
*Ibe Kachikwu |
A lot of song and dance has been made by the government
since its inception of cleaning up the NNPC. The former petroleum minister,
Diezani Allison-Madueke, has been excoriated to the position of “public enemy
number one.” The president has refused to appoint a Minister of Petroleum
Resources, deciding to oversee that portfolio himself and, thereby, keep a tight
rein on the oil industry. But he has given us a Minister of State for Petroleum
Resources in the person of Ibe Kachikwu.
So is corruption now being choked to death in the Nigerian
oil industry? If reports are to be believed, that is far from the case. According
to Bako Abdullahi Yelwa, a former official of the Kaduna chapter of the Independent Petroleum
Products Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), the change that has happened
is merely that a new cabal of thieves and robbers are now controlling the NNPC
and its affiliate, the Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC).
Yelwa maintains this is responsible for the never-ending
cycle of fuel scarcity that remains prevalent all around the country. The new
cabal is said to insist on extorting money before issuing the allocation of
petroleum products. Yelwa insists the kerosene allocations promised IPMAN
members have been diverted to the “relations, friends and cronies” of the
Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu.
He said, “I
challenge anybody to ask any marketer if they have gotten allocations. PPMC
staff are frustrating independent marketers. Why will they ask for a percentage
of our profit before giving us allocation? And when we refuse, they frustrate
the process of getting our allocation. They only give product allocation to
marketers that have given them a share of their profit upfront.”
The president needs to address the issues raised here
expeditiously. Since he is now the de facto Minister of Petroleum Resources,
one need hardly point out that these kinds of sharp practices, nine months
after his election, cannot continue to be attributed to Goodluck Jonathan. Mr.
President, the buck now stops with you.
*Aribasala is a syndicated columnist
No comments:
Post a Comment