By Tony Eluemunor
Please take your mind back to 1990 when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
invaded and annexed Kuwait; the price of crude petroleum jumped because the
ensuing war disrupted oil supplies. A totally unforeseen windfall, earning for
Nigeria $12.1 billion. But did the windfall benefit Nigeria? A report put it
thus: “Fiscal discipline broke down once more (because) established budgetary
procedures were by-passed and the strategic planning processes that had been
established under the Structural Adjustment Programme were largely ignored. Of
major concern was the expenditure of the oil revenue without any budgetary
authorization.”
*Babangida
This huge amount of money was fluffed away though Nigerians had
by then been suffocating under SAP for four whole years! And wait for this; the
1991 budget suffered a deficit spending of N35.5 billion. It was as though
that oil bonanza never happened.
I know that those who celebrated former Military President Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) as Nigerians best ruler as he turned 80, never failed to mention the National Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND) the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) Peoples Bank of Nigeria (PBN) the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DIFRRI) and others as programmes and bodies he established. But have they told us how such benefitted Nigeria?
