• Describe it as imaginary, dead on arrival
From Fred Itua and Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The atmosphere on the floor of the red chamber was tensed, yesterday, as senators disagreed on the contents of the 2018 budget. Some senators faulted the budget estimates, describing it as unreliable and unrealistic.
Enyinnaya Abaribe, who heads power committee, described the budget as “fictitious, imaginary and dead on arrival,” a view shared by Joshua Lidani who dismissed the estimates as “wishful thinking.”
Ben Murray-Bruce argued that the annual fiscal estimate of the Federal Government is “a budget of active imagination.”
But their positions did not sit well with Ahmed Lawan who requested the leave of the Senate to urge Abaribe to withdraw the “derogatory” words.
“You cannot describe the budget presented by Mr. President to a joint session of the National Assembly a fictitious document,” Lawan argued.
The senators expressed these divergent views when they kicked off the consideration of the general principles and second reading of the 2018 budget as contained in a Bill for an act to authorise the issue from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation totalling N8.6 trillion.
Of the amount, N456,458,654,074 is for statutory transfers, N2,233,835,365,699 for debt service, N3,494,277,820,219 for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure while N2,427,665,113,222 goes for contribution to the development fund for capital expenditure for the year ending December 31, 2018.
Lawan, who gave the overview of the budget noted that in keeping with the administration’s policy, 30.8 per cent (N2,652 trillion) of the aggregate expenditure was allocated to capital budget.
He said the fiscal operations will result in a deficit of N2,005 trillion or 1.77 per cent GDP. He reminded his colleagues that the deficit would be partly financed by new borrowing estimated at N1.699 trillion.
While 50 per cent of the borrowing will be sourced externally, the balance would be sourced domestically, and the balance of the deficit of N306 billion financed from the proceeds of privatisation of some non-oil assets by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE).
The lawmaker also reminded his colleagues that the budget was predicated oil price benchmark of $45 per barrel; oil production estimate of 2.3 million barrel per day; exchange rate of N305/US$; real GDP growth of 3.4 per cent and inflation rate of 12.4 per cent.
Lawan had barely concluded his overview of the budget estimate, when Abaribe took the floor.
“As at last week, the total receivables that government got was one tenth of what was stated publicly. Instead of the budget in 2017 of more than N800 billion to be received, what was received was N150 billion. In what sense will this 2018 budget be predicated on an assumption that the facts have already been destroyed. You are assuming N11 trillion yet you are getting less than N1 trilion.
“This is imaginary. We beg this government to be very specific in the indications of the assumptions underlining this budget. The assumptions are totally wrong and totally off the mark,” he declared.
Joshua Lidani, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from Gombe State said the performance of the 2017 budget, especially as it related to capital performance was abysmal.
Murray-Bruce on his part said: “If you look at the budget from 1960 to the present, you have agencies that were designed for 1960, agencies that were designed for the Nigerian civil war, agencies that were designed to suit some certain conditions in life. 60 years later, those agencies still exist in the budget. If you look at the budget, you will see some agencies, they get recurrent expenditure, they pay salaries, they get houses, computers, cars but they have no money to do any work. Some agencies are so bloated it defies logic but these agencies exist. So, we have 2.4 million people consuming 60 per cent of the recurrent expenditure of Nigeria, it doesn’t make any sense.”
Also, there was a row at the lower chamber over the inability of the House of Represenatives to pass the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) before now. Deputy Speaker, Yussuf Lasun who presided had to appeal before the commencement of debate on the general principles of the 2018 Appropriation Bill at yesterday’s plenary.
Shortly after he called for debate on the budget, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lawmaker, Kingsley Chinda raised a point of order.
Chinda said it was wrong for the House to talk about the 2018 budget when the MTEF had not been passed. Consequently, he called on the House to step down debate on the budget.
Majority of lawmakers echoed their support. However, Lasun begged the dissenting lawmakers to allow the debate commence, promising that the MTEF will be passed before the end of the week.
“Let us look at agencies that make no sense. FRCN sell it to the staff. FRCN has 8,000 workers sell it to them. Sell NTA to the staff. Voice of Nigeria, who listens to Voice of Nigeria? Sell it. If the staff wants to buy, let them buy it. Set up a cooperative like Awolowo did, sell it to them. If we spend 71 per cent on recurrent expenditure, we will never get out of this predicament we find ourselves.
“I sent a letter to the Minister of Transport and I asked him to send us the contract he has with the Chinese. Let’s say we spend 10 billion dollars with the Chinese and they give us a loan what percentage of that money is spent in the local economy? How many Nigerians are employed? Which steel product are we producing locally? The last time I checked, rail lines were produced 300-400 years ago. It’s not rocket science, we have Ajaokuta steel. So if we have the capability of producing steel or we have the capability in slow motion of making this work as Nigerians, we don’t need to borrow $10 billion from the Chinese and then give them back $10 billion, what do we benefit in our economy?
“The United Nations projected that in February 2018, Nigeria will have more people in poverty than in India. We have a population of 180 million people, India has 1.3 billion. Then, if we are going to have more people in poverty than India, then we have to create jobs. Once we create jobs we can then export our Naira to China, to India or some other places.”
On his part, Gbenga Ashafa noted that the 2018 budget cannot be effectively discussed without going back to previous budgets and
considering how the budgets performed.
He said the major problem of the country’s budgets had been poor
funding. He noted that the budget could be big but without money to
fund it, it makes no sense.
Ashafa stated for instance that only N700 million had been released
from the budget of Ministry Transportation out of N11.4 billion.
He prayed the Senate to work to ensure that enough funds were always
released to fund the budget in the interest of development of the
country. He also sought a speedier procurement process.
Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu who presided, agreed that
without the revenue, the country would have no money to do the
expenditure.