2012 budget gathering momentum
By Sola Shittu
This year has been tagged the year of protests. In fact Times International Man of the Year is the protester. As soon as we launch into the first month of the year, the protests started in the North African countries spreading through Europe, forcing prominent Arab leaders like Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Ghadaffi out of office. But unlike Mubarak, Ghadaffi was not lucky; he lost his life in the battle to remain in office even after spending 42 years. Protest still continues in Syria with the Syrian leader launching attacks on his people like Ghadaffi. It is not certain yet what will happen to him but there is ominous sign of impending doom for him since he has started going the way of Ghadaffi by fighting, shooting and killing his own people. The black African countries in the west, east, central and southern Africa, have remained unperturbed by the orgy of protests spreading like wild fire in the Arab world. Nigeria in particular lacks the protest culture but as President Jonathan presented the 2012 budget to the National Assembly last Tuesday, he was silent on the time bomb; the fuel subsidy removal with only a comment that he would liberalise the downstream sector of the oil industry to provide more employment. But how he would do it was something he kept to his chest. That Tuesday in the National Assembly was something else. It was a day that relived the beauty and power of democracy. The President was this time around facing his “bosses” (the people); to present a budget proposal of N4.749 trillion with security gulping a whopping N931.91 billion, a proposal which seems discomforting to many of the lawmakers who are insisting that Jonathan must justify it. The Power sector follows the security with N161.42, Works, N180.8billion, Education excluding UBE, PTDF and ETF, N400.15 billion, Agric N78.98, Health, N282.77, Water resources, N59.66, Aviation, N49.23. Others are Transport N54.83, Land and Housing, N26.49, Science and Technology, N18.31.
Before the budget was presented to the joint session of the National Assembly, Senate President and Chairman of the National Assembly, Senator David Mark fired the first salvo in his opening address by criticising poor implementation of budget by government which to him has not matched the words of government as economic policies often lack continuity and projects are needlessly discarded or abandoned.
To him, the country has what it takes to be a great nation or a world power. “But we have never challenged ourselves sufficiently over the years to attain this desired goal.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Aminu Tambuwal, was not lenient in his address to the President too. Tambuwal came hard on Jonathan asking him to do something and very quickly before this house collapses on all of us. “The truth is, there is no better signal that a government is alive to its responsibility than through its strict adherence to its own budget proposal”. It is very clear that the National Assembly is not against subsidy removal, but the fears remain on how the matter will be presented to the electorate and the public at large without a serious damage to their political career. Many of the lawmakers fear that they might lose their bid to return to the National Assembly if the matter is presented to members of their constituencies who are already warming up for a showdown with government on the matter. Tambuwal’s closing remark was welcome by a standing ovation from members. President Jonathan sat in the second row of the raised platform in the hallowed chamber of the House of Representatives beaming with smile as the two principal officers expressed the feelings of the National Assembly. Obviously, both Mark and Tambuwal were speaking the minds of the people and this has definitely put the President in a very tight corner on how to confront the issue of fuel subsidy. No wonder he was silent on it in the budget. However that does not mean that the budget was not without its own very good sides, which require a lot of courage for government to implement. For instance, while the ban and high tariff on some imported foodstuffs is commendable, the government has not provided any alternative for the looming scarcity or high cost of foodstuffs that will follow. As Senator Olubunmi Adetunmbi stated, the allocation to the security sector was four times what was given to health.
“What is going into the security is six times what we are spending for power. The prioritisation of out spending is not reflective of what is happening in our economy. If we spend more on agriculture, which can provide jobs, we won’t worry about security. This brings us to the real issue of our discussion. If Nigeria has successfully escaped the protests that greeted year 2011, we must be very careful not to plunge the country into an unending strike which the labour and the civil societies are already warming for. It will be in the best interest of the government to look inward and be very careful in our fiscal policy that still has the carryover of high recurrent expenditure giving more rooms for corruption while capital vote remains at 30 percent. If government can swap the vote of recurrent expenditure for capital expenditure, it means there will be provision of more infrastructures and there will be more jobs for the people. The present state of government being the highest employer of labour in the country is a reversal of what we used to be in the 70s and early 80s. Juicy jobs in the country today are found only in government service which allows for lots of corruption through bureaucratic bottlenecks and except the private sector is allowed to run the economy of this country as it used to be before and as it is in other nations of the world then we shall continue to rigmarole at the same spot with our vast untapped natural and human resources. But still this budget is pregnant; however the manner of delivery and the kind of baby it will deliver is in the hand of GEJ who is the driver of this nation today. But whatever decision that will be taken must always take into consideration of the fact that the masses of this nation are already overburdened.
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