Budget 2016: Here it comes at last!

Its late arrival notwithstanding, the expected presentation of the 2016 budget to the National Assembly hopefully next Tuesday, provides cause for both cheer and caution for not a few Nigerians and other stake holders in the Nigerian economy. This is due to the series of landmark dispensations in the fortunes of the country which it represents. After so many years of stagnation nobody can blame Nigerians for expecting nothing short of an El Dorado from any new administration which the Buhari presidency represents.
Yet just as it may have been touted in some quarters as the magic wand for the administration to launch its complement of reforms, the need for caution cannot be over emphasized if the budget must be saved from failing in performance. The envisaged cautionary measures are not based on any sorcery nor rocket science, but are simple processes of adjustment in the perception of the various ministers and their support bureaucrats who statutorily codify the draft budget
For while it is traditional to hold the ministers and the president liable for the budget, the truth remains that these political actors are often mere strangers to the very documents and provisions they are conscripted to defend and execute. That is why the new ministers need to ‘shine their eyes’ over the budget provisions they will be held liable to implement. Whatever is anti-people and does not provide immediate change in the nation’s public life has no place in the package. Just as well,they need to ensure that no legacy projects that will only provide avenues for syphoning public funds by unscrupulous public servants including their own often unhelpful aides, are blocked.
The contention of this article is informed by the rather diminished prospects for the desired change which leakages on some of the prescriptions in the budget betray. For instance at a time of grave security challenges the Nigeria Police which is the nation’s first line of defence, is left to scrounge in the face of diminishing levels of statutory allocations as revealed by the Inspector General of Police Mr. Solomon Arase.Such a situation derives from the ease with which Nigerians forget that it is the avoidable operational handicaps of the police, who are abandoned to operate largely with means and methods of a past era, that fostered the escalation of anomic tendencies into full blown insurgencies and other threats to the nation’s territorial integrity. Today we are lamenting over the burden they pose.Hence as we beef up provisions for the military, the police should also benefit proportionately.Simply put, denying the police their due empowerment implies shooting the nation in the foot!
Like the police there are several other areas of national life in respect of which the 2016 budget needs to benefit from an out-of-the-box thinking. For example a key success factor for the budget is the revamping of the nation’s infrastructure. As at the last count over 11,000 projects are abandoned nationwide due to the blight of funding for these facilitieswhich constitute the backbone of the country. Beyond conjecture the ultimate success of the 2016 budget will rank better with landmark strides in infrastructural development than on how many Nigerians on whom the planned monthly stipend of N5,000.00 under the Concessionary Cash Transfer (CCT) programme is wasted.
So will the budget’s impact on the Niger Delta be more pronounced if it veers away from past indulgences of merely ‘settling’ militants rather selectively with cash, and focuses on generating sustainable initiatives that will promote small and medium scale business startups that will enjoy wider impact. Like any wetland across the world the Niger Delta is not only rich in oil and gas. The natural aquatic endowment provides bountiful opportunities in modernised fishing, forestry, and other areas, which can be exploited for unquantifiable dividends by operators in the area.
Just as well, the Federal Capital Territory, which mirrors the quality of life in the country, lamentably has more slums than many other cities in the country. While the alluring beauty of choice areas like Maitama, Asokoro, Wuse, Wuye, Garki may easily pass for the good life in Abuja, they only belie the true state of affairs in the territory. Even the most casual visit to the satellite towns of Karu, Nyanya, Kubwa, Dutse, Lugbe, Gwagwalada and others easily betray the true picture of life in Abuja. The planned change by the Buhari administration will have little connect with the people if the plight of these satellite towns which sustain the main city is not addressed with urgency. Without provisions for link roads, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure for them in 2016 budget, Buhari’s change agenda will be meaningless to the residents and other Nigerians across the country.
If nothing else, the circumstances that played out inthis closing year of 2015 clearly teach that the political terrain is just a stage on which politicians stand to play specific roles as mere actors. Just between January and December this year, Nigeria has swayed contrastingly under the tenure of two presidents – Goodluck Jonathan from January to June and Muhamadu Buhari from then to the present, all because of a mere process of election. Until the change of guard in June, key officials in the Jonathan administration along with their cohorts played the invincible, and engaged in sordid acts which today – only months after,  are being exposed as outright mindless outrages in betrayal of public trust.
The revelations of financial misappropriation in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources soon after the exit of the last administration, which have been dubbed Nigeria’s ‘oil gate’and in respect of which some Nigerian officials are presently engaged in not very palatable business with the British anti-corruption agencies, are instructive. This is just as the current rave aroundan‘arms-gate’ scandal involving high profile Nigerians in both public and private sectoroperatorsis also anotherdispensation from a possibly wider field of infractions associated with the last administration. Yet these are scenarios in which a little discretion by any indicted official would have prevented. The plight of the affected individuals should therefore provide enough lessons for our present crop of public officers to imbibe the maxim that discretion is the better part of ‘power show’.An infallible truth from these developments isthat accountability remains a duty that must be discharged, even after tenure in any public office.
There is the story of a man in a town who was considered to be out of his mind, since he was always seated idly – day in day out, in front of the king’s palace. Whenever the king made an outing in his royal entourage, the man would strive to be within ear-shot of the king and shout “oh king, may you receive what is greater than a king”. So one day the king stopped and asked the man, “my friend why do you always pray that I receive what is greater than a king when as you can see, I am already a king?”In response to the king’s query, the man promptlysaid “finishing well.”
It is not clear if the aspiration of finishing well enjoys significant appeal among the mainstream of of public officers in past administrations. Hence the massive level of public sector failures as manifest in failed public works, dislocated infrastructure, looted public funds, as well as grave acts of miscarriage of justice, to name just a few. The scant premium the Nigerian society places on the principle of finishing well by public officers, is accentuated by the routine practice by succeeding administrations of recycling back into reckoning, individuals that had ignobly earned for themselves rather odious records of service in the past. Some brainboxes claim that such a practice is justified by inability of the system to profile the offending officers effectively as unfit for fresh public office. Thus, such defiled officers benefit from what popularculture refers to as the ‘eleventh commandment’ – “thou shalt not be caught”. After all the nation’s penal code and justice system, until they undergo the much awaited reforms, will remain  slanted against only those who are ill-disposed  enough to be caught.
Judging from Buhari’s painstaking preparations for governance, failure is clearly not in his dictionary. As the 2016 budget comes on stream, the onus for success now falls on the ministers, who shall be acting under the oversight of the National Assembly, to deliver to the Nigerian people the dividends of a change agenda. The situation also demands from the National Assembly more discretion in passing and over-sighting the budget for the higher public good of all Nigerians.