In a bid to assuage protesters during the course of the #EndBadGovernance protest, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu while addressing Nigerians in a live broadcast recounted the actualisation of half of his government’s revenue generation target for 2024 as one of the major achievements.
According to the president, aggregate government revenues have more than doubled, hitting over N9.1 trillion in the first half of 2024 compared to the first half of 2023, due to its efforts at blocking leakages, introducing automation and mobilising funding creatively.
Despite this achievement by the Tinubu administration, it is ironical that Nigerians cannot point to any evidence of positive developmental transformation or changes in their livelihood as a result of the revenue generated in the first half of the year.
Such quantum of money realised is expected to be deployed through budget releases to MDAs for the funding of critical infrastructural projects and programmes. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of projects embarked upon by most MDAs. Upon enquiries, most of the MDAs have complained of lack of budgetary releases to implement approved capital projects.
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Amongst the promises of Mr President, is to provide a massive social security programmes for Nigerians, implement critical infrastructural projects, reduce poverty and hunger by boosting food production and providing security in the farming areas, invest in renewable energy etc.
Judging from these promises, little can be said to have been achieved because infrastructural projects across the country still remain at a very critical state. Notable routes like the East-West road and roads traversing between Lokoja in the North Central and the South East to mention but a few, still remain un-motorable.
On the social security programmes such as the presidential conditional grant scheme, where promises were made to reach one million businesses in the 774 local government areas, and such other programmes, there is lack of transparency and accountability on how the beneficiaries of these programmes were selected.
Nigerians are very much aware that the current social register being utilised by the country to cater for the poorest of the poor cannot be trusted due to the corruption cases recorded and reported in the use of the register.
There is no evidence of cleaning the register or producing a new one.
It was only recently, that the president launched the 33 powered CNG buses amongst high demand for CNG-powered vehicles in Nigeria. It is the expectations of Nigerians that by this time, the federal government would have established partnerships with investors to establish numerous CNG assembling plants across the country and facilitate the importation of CNG-powered vehicles to be distributed to Nigerians at subsidised rate.
Nigerians also expected the federal government to have deployed funds to fix our moribund refineries and getting them to work at optimal capacity so that the country can stop the importation of refined petroleum products.
Most worrisome is the fact that the budget office of the federation has been failing in its duty to upload budget implementation reports on its website, the last report on the BOF website is that of the third quarter of 2023. The failure of the budget office to account for a round of four quarters implementation report of the 2024 budget, makes it difficult for well-meaning Nigerians to assess Mr. President’s performance based on his statement on revenue realized.
In conclusion, as the nation forges ahead to attain its fiscal targets, the utilization of these resources should be apportioned transparently in such a manner that would be evidential in the social wellbeing and developmental outcomes of Nigerians.
Victor Emejuiwe is the Monitoring Evaluation/Strategic Communication Manager, Centre for Social Justice, Abuja
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