by Kalu Aja
The $30 Federal budget as proposed is simply fraudulent, these is just no way else to put it.
I had written earlier about the absence of the Education budget on the website of the Budget Office, yes there is a link to the Education budget, but click on it, it takes you to the Defense Budget, so in effect the education is “missing”. Undeterred I looked at the Consolidated Budget to find the Education budget, I wish I did not.
This budget was termed and advertised as a “zero-based” budget, unfortunately, this budget is a fraud, anyone who approves or signs this budget is complicit.
Let me give you a few examples in this “missing” education budget, Federal Government College Garki has a cost N400,237 repeated 20 times…20 times! Local transport, books, security, maintenance, etc, all the same cost for N400,237.
Federal College Ijanike has N350,362 repeated 12 times. How can newspapers, cleaning, legal, sporting, etc all cost the same?
Federal College of Iket Essiet has N1,278,682 repeated 8 times… How? Water, drugs, training… all cost exactly N1,278,682 each?
And it goes on and on and on…
Now before you assume it’s just restricted to the Ministry of Education, the ministry with the highest allocation the behemoth Ministry of Works, Housing and Power has a line item repeated 7 times i.e. “Generation of 700mw from Zungeru Hydropower project is duplicated 6 times!
These are just the duplication, what about the appropriateness of the expenses? The State House Hospital, just one hospital gets more allocation than all of Nigeria teaching hospitals combined…
Let me be very clear, the State House Medical Center get a proposed capital appropriation of N3.8 billion, the combined total of the capital vote for ALL teaching hospitals in Nigeria is about N3.0 billion… no wonder the capital vote is high this year.
Could the equipment being purchased for the State House Hospital not be installed in the National Hospital, so all Nigerian can use it?
I am just disgusted…
This has implications for all of us. You see in any budget, you list your revenues, then your expenses, the difference is either a deficit or a surplus. In Nigeria’s case it’s a deficit. Our President presents a deficit of N2.2 trillion. And to fund this N2.2 trillion, Nigeria intends to borrow $25 million every single day… YES, TWENTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS a day. Twenty-Five Million Dollars a day! Then, you and I will pay for this borrowing. Remember oil prices have crashed, that’s why the government is introducing stamp duty taxes everywhere.
The defense given is that we are borrowing to fund the capital vote, to build roads and rails, this is false. We are borrowing because the recurrent vote has been bloated with numerous repeated “N400,237” and “N1,278,682”. If the recurrent vote is properly audited and these duplication cleaned out, the difference between the revenues and expenditure will fall, and subsequently the borrowing will fall or become unneccessary.
This budget is a fraud in intent and content, and truly I am ashamed this fraud has been presented and has been actually passed to second reading….so this will pass?
We will actually spend more capital vote on one hospital than ALL teaching hospital COMBINED?
I have to stop here; I don’t want to abuse people….To hell with your anticorruption ……to hell with it….
Kalu Aja is an advocate of limited government and a fiscal conservative. In his day job he is a financial adviser. Connect with him on Facebook.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
