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.