by Charles Ohia
[pull_quote_center]’When all that is impossible has been removed, the remaining, however improbable must be the truth.’ – Sherlock Holmes[/pull_quote_center]
On the morning of the 22nd of December 2015, Nigerians were glued to their television sets watching their President, Muhammadu Buhari make a presentation of the 2016 budget to a joint session of the National Assembly. At the end of it all, the presentation was applauded by a number of Nigerians as one of the finest hours of Buhari’s seven month old Presidency. But as it is with football, after the applause has died and the last fan has departed, the stadium is left in a mess. And that is exactly what the Buhari-led government has left Nigerians with; a mess. At least going by the revelations so far. But first, the genesis.
Many had expected Buhari to hit the ground running immediately after his inauguration, but instead he became subsumed in a befuddling gale of lethargy as epitomised by his questionable decision that constituting a cabinet could wait. A wait the country is finding increasingly arduous to recover from. One would have thought that the circumstance of his coming into power was all the impetus he needed to constitute a competent economic team as well as appoint a substantive Minister of Finance. But no! Instead, as has become custom, Nigerians were suffused with justifications as to why Permanent Secretaries were the best things to have happened to governance in Nigeria, by those Reuben Abati famously described as the “new stars and celebrities who though not necessarily the most educated or knowledgeable, but who populate the social media space with their fast-food type intellectualism”.
This is spite of the fact that the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) was losing billions with each passing week. This was in spite of the fact that jobs were being cut. This was in spite of the fact that instead of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), we were witnessing huge capital flight, since no one except Buhari had the vaguest idea of the economic thrust of his government. This was in spite of the fact that the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) which is a precursor to the budget was constitutionally due in August. This was in spite of the fact that our foreign reserves were dwindling in response to rapidly falling oil prices and a foreign exchange (FX) regime that made sense only to the formulators of our monetary policy.
Eventually, when the Ministers were appointed amidst all the drama that came with it, the disappointment was profound. It was inconceivable that these men and women were the reason why we had lost six months of a semblance of governance. However, we are a people of resilience and so we accepted our fate with a mixture of humility, equanimity and righteous decibel levels of wailing. Isn’t that why in spite of being one of the lowest ranked countries on the Human Development Index and having the worst energy efficiency per capita in the world, Nigerians were adjudged as the happiest people on earth? Nevertheless, our collective expectation of these Ministers was to drive the policy of the new government through their various ministries. Their first major task was the development of an economic blueprint in form of a budget. It turns out that their collective effort is an epic fail.
They failed in colours so fly that Joseph’s famed coat of many colours will go green with envy.
Or how else do you explain the atrocious proposal of N1 Billion by the Federal Ministry of Communication Technology for the purchase of chairs and tables? How else do you explain that it was proposed for rents to be paid for the Presidential villa? How do you explain that the Power, Works and Housing Minister proposed to spend N500 million on attending ‘statutory meetings’? How else do you explain that the Minister of Interior proposed to spend an amount 2,500% higher from last year on refurbishing his office? How else do you explain that a Unity School under the Ministry of Education budgeted twenty different unrelated items for the exact same sum of N400, 237? I can go on and on through the dizzying labyrinth of frivolities.
On the surface, it does seem like a genuine arrant display of ineptitude and incompetence. However, on closer scrutiny, what strikes any discerning mind is the fact that this document was deliberately cobbled together as a special purpose vehicle to hoodwink Nigerians and in the process blindly pillage whatever is left of our collective patrimony beyond whatever palliatives medical science or miracle can render. But there is a limit to which Nigerians can be taken for a jolly good ride and this is exactly what galvanized well-meaning Nigerians to condemn the 2016 budget in its entirety. The results are as ubiquitous as they are effective.
First it was the Minister of Education; Adamu Adamu who stated in unambiguous terms that he was unaware of the hidden N10B that was discovered by the NASS members during their review of the budget.
This was followed strangely but not unexpectedly by the Minister of Health; Professor Isaac Adewole who declared a few days ago in very shocking fashion that the figures attributed to his Ministry were not what was submitted by him. He took it to comical heights by asserting that he was going to submit his own version of the budget to the National Assembly; definitely ignorant that the Fiscal Responsibility Act prohibits Ministers from individually handing in their budgets to NASS. Of course, when it comes to repudiation, The Information Minister, Lai Mohammed cannot be outdone. He too refuted his ministry’s budget. As has become custom to the APC led government, they all had a barrage of excuses. This time the icing on the excuse cake was preposterously splashed by the FG in a failed attempt to exonerate itself from the disgrace that is the 2016 budget.
A statement issued by the FG’s spokesman revealed to a bewildered nation, that a budget mafia was responsible for inserting all the frivolous and duplicitous figures in the budget. The devil must be seething with rage at the nerve to tell such blatant lies of elephantine proportions.
From it being missing, to it being withdrawn and only recently being out rightly denied by the very people who put together it’s duplicitous component parts, the 2016 budget has been enmeshed in all shades of hilarity and shown for exactly what it is; a carefully crafted plot to defraud the Nigerian people. If the APC led government is worth the ballot paper through which it was voted into power, the least it should do as a matter of national importance is to summarily withdraw the scandalous document from the National Assembly forthwith. That is the minimum expectation from Nigerians who are still shocked at their effrontery.
In the great words of Sherlock Homes, when all that is impossible has been removed, the remaining however improbable must be the truth. The impossibility that the 2016 wrote itself is already established. It is improbable that Buhari and his Ministers were unaware of what they signed off on. That our national budget has been treated in such a shambolic, scruffy and scornful manner, the only inference that can be drawn from this whole nauseating episode therefore is that Buhari and the government he leads, has shown a contemptible level of irresponsibility and incompetence.
And that is the truth!
Charles Ohia is a political analyst. He tweets from @9jabloke.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
