Which Budget, Please?

(From The News (Nigeria) - AAGM)

Byline: Oluokun Ayorinde

Because of the Shoddy Implementation of Past Budgets And Their Non-Impact On the Economy And the People, Apathy Trails the 2005 Budget Presented Two Weeks Ago By President Olusegun Obasanjo

Two weeks after President Olusegun Obasanjo presented the 2005 Appropriation Bill to the joint session of the National Assembly on Tuesday 12 September, it is not generating the usual excited discussions or arguments that usually follow such budget presentations. TheNEWS investigations last week revealed widespread indifference to the N1.6 trillion budget. "Many times in the past, we've had all sorts of brilliant budgets - Budget of Hope, Budget of Restoration, etc - that make good propaganda. But what came out of those budgets? No progress. Nigerians are beginning to lose faith in the document because of the abject failure of such budgets to tackle the problems of poverty and unemployment and to create sustainable development," Engineer, Afolabi Adedeji, Managing Director, Buildwell International Limited, a facility maintenance and engineering construction company told this magazine.

His view adequately represents those of bankers, industrialists and varied professionals who spoke with TheNEWS on the appropriation bill last week. Some confessed that thet were yet to read the budget speech. Even the few who claimed to have glimpsed through it sounded indifferent. The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, MAN, said it would be making its position known this week. But going by what an official of the association told the magazine, the exercise is only being a corresponding ritual; manufacturers and industrialists now trust a rattle snake more than they do the Nigerian government's annual budget. Three years ago, government raised the hopes of industrialsits so high with the establishment of the Bank of Industry. Today, the same government starves the bank of funds to revitalise the industrial sector. While it wasted billions of naira and foreign exchange hosting the All Africa Games and Heads of Commonwealth Governments last year, the Obasanjo administration could only give the Bank of Industry N5 billion out of its vital N50 billion take-off fund.

The appropriation bill has become an annual ritual with plenty of promises but little or no delivery. And the fact that it has lost relevance and the confidence of the people could have begun from its presentation at the National Assembly. The president's claim of over 65 percent implementation of the 2004 budget was received with loud murmurings, an indication that the lawmakers were not sold on the claim. "There is nothing to show for the huge additional revenue that accrued to this country in the past one year," Ahmed Salik, the All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, leader in the House of Representatives, said while dismissing the 65 percent achievement claim by the president. Salik described the president's address as "a circus-show." To the legislator, the 2005 budget holds no hope of revamping the economy given the Obasanjo administration's penchant for partial implementation of budget.

Budget faithful who have been taking a look at the appropriation bill tagged "Building Physical and Human Infrastructure for Job Creation and Poverty Eradication" have been analysing its key assumptions. Of immediate concern is the targeted single digit inflation rate, especially with the rate currently running close to 20 percent. "With the recent increase in the prices of petroleum products and the unstable bank interest rates, inflation rates cannot but go up," a banker, Don Amachree, explained. To Jimoh Ibrahim, chairman of Global ...