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Opinion: 2017 State House budget analysis - by Saatah Nubari

This is a very illuminating analysis of the 2017 Federal Budget of Nigeria recently presented to the National Assembly by President Mohammed Buhari. Alliance for Integrity in Governance endorses it. This was first published in YNaijaDotCom - The internet Newspaper for Young Nigerians. Read and think!

Part 1

The first time this budget analysis series ran was for the 2016 budget; and it becomes visible each day that the 1810 page document was a horrid, hurriedly-put, corrupt-conduit-filled piece of executive cluelessness. Well, since I’m more of a realist than any of the other-ists, I’ll just say that the fact that the world lost an entire tree to the making of the paper it was inked on is a tragedy. We have been given a sequel; the 2017 budget was presented to the National Assembly by the President in the presence of the ministers who drafted it—and even slept while the presentation was on—and it was called the “Budget of Recovery and Growth.” If you noticed, it is quite a change from the previous budget of change just like the government’s change mantra. Here are some quotes from the President’s speech on what when passed, will be arguably the most important document in the country—sorry, just checked and it is 63 paragraphs long so I will just skip to analysing the 2017 budget as we await the implementation report of the 2016 budget.

The 2017 budget is N7.298 trillion. According to the government, this comprises of

419. Statutory transfers of N419.02 billion;
420. Debt service of N1.66 trillion;

iii. Sinking fund of N177.46 billion to retire certain maturing bonds;

2. Non-debt recurrent expenditure of N2.98 trillion; and
3. Capital expenditure of N2.24 trillion (including capital in Statutory Transfers).

We will begin with the State House budget, which is, 42,917,666,214. This almost double what the previous government budgeted for this in 2015 which was 23,465,865,117. Out of this, 19,970,000,000 is the total capital budget while the total recurrent budget stands at 22,947,666,214. The total overhead is 10,171,082,268 and that for total personnel is 12,776,583,946.

This is the first piece in the #SaatahBudgetSeries2017, and I will be looking at the budget of the State House (which was referred to as Presidency in previous budgets).

STATE HOUSE

There are 16 agencies under the State House, and they are: State House Headquarters, The Office of the President, The Office of the Vice President, Office of the Chief of Staff of the President, Office of the Chief Security Officer of the President, State House Medical Centre, State House Lagos Liaison Office, Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS), National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS). Kuru, Bureau of Public Enterprises, National Emergency Management Agency, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Bureau of Public Procurement, Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission and its centres, and Office of the Chief Economic Adviser to the President which funny enough the President only appointed in August of this year.

The first piece of shit I was hit with, ironically, was the “Sewage Charges” budget of the State House Headquarters” It was put at 52,827,800. That means 144,733 every day. That’s a lot of shit as far as the eye can see. Compare this with the “Sewage Charge” budget for 2015 which was 4,957,143 and for 2016 which was 6,121,643. This simply means the shit charge went up by 1050% compared with the 2015 budget, and 850% when compared with the 2016 budget. The 52,827,800 question I want to ask now is what exactly are they shitting there?

The State House Headquarters budget for “Honorarium/Sitting Allowance” is 556,592,736. Let me remind you that the previous government budgeted 174,471,371 for the same item in 2015, while in 2016, this administration jacked it up to 507,518, 861.

The State House Headquarters still continues to budget for “Residential Rent.” This is something I have failed to understand up till now and I wouldn’t mind someone explaining it to me. That aside, the amount budgeted for this “Residential Rent” in 2015 was 22,459,575, while in 2016 it was put at 27,735,643. I don’t know how or why, but in the 2017 budget of “Recovery and Growth,” this same “Residential Rent” went up to 77,545,700. Whoever the Landlord of that State House Headquarters is, in this economy, he must be a very lucky and fortunate chap.

There is an 8,539,200 budget for “Anti-Corruption” and I’m perplexed as to what exactly it is.

The last time there was a budget for “Motor Vehicles” or anything like that was in the 2014 budget by the last administration and it was a total of 132,200,000. This government came in in 2016 and somehow concluded that the State House Headquarters did not have enough “Motor Vehicles,” so they started by budgeting 877,015,000 which was something like a 650% increase from the 2014 budget for the same item. The State House Headquarters still doesn’t think there are enough “Motor Vehicles,” so in 2017 they have budgeted a total of 197,000,000 for the purchase of “Motor Vehicles” and “Buses.” At this rate, by 2019, this government would’ve succeeded in buying enough “Motor Vehicles” to drive the entire country off the edge.

2016 will end up being one of the darkest years in this country in relation to power supply. So, I do not understand where the State House Headquarters got megawatts from in 2016 that they have now budgeted 319,625,753 for “Electricity Charge” in 2017. Just so you know, the “Electricity Charge” for 2016 was put at 45,332,433.

The 2016 State House Headquarters budget for the “Rehabilitation/Repairs of Residential Buildings” was 642,568,122, while in 2017, I don’t know, but it looks like an enormous asteroid managed to hit and destroy the residential building at the State House Headquarters because what is budgeted for “Rehabilitation/Repairs of Residential Buildings” happens to be 5,625,752,757.

As usual, knowing that we have travelling President, 739,487,784 has been budgeted for “International Travel & Transport.” Last year only the Vice President budgeted for books. This year neither the President nor his Vice budgeted for it. Apparently, they’re tired of reading.

Just like in last year’s budget, the entire capital budget for the National Emergency Management Agency is for the “Construction of Office Building,” all 374,473,456 of it.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has budgeted 5,999,070,468 for the “Construction/Provision of Office Buildings.” In 2016 they spent 58,434,683 on that. If you do the math, that’s an increase of over 10,000% and qualifies as an economic and financial crime.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission also budgeted 230,536,000 for “Legal Services.”  I don’t know if this is enough, but since they say it is; and as long as none of that amount goes to the case-bumbling, Twitter SAN, Festus Keyamo, no wahala.

In 2016 the EFCC budgeted 93,136,000 for “Motor Vehicles,” but since maybe the corruption they should be fighting has gotten faster, they have upped that to 455,000,000. So if you had a plan of running away from the EFCC, I am sorry, they will have almost half a billion Naira worth of cars to chase you with. It is a car race now you know.

There a line item in the EFCC budget that mentions the “Procurement and Upgrade of Microsoft Product Licences” which 142,237,198 was set aside for. This is as vague as something can get, and when it comes to corruptly enriching yourself, being vague is the best bet.

In 2016 3,260,000 was budgeted by the EFCC for the “Purchase of Photocopiers” while in the 2017 budget 13,755,000 is the magic number.

1,100,595,088 has been budgeted for the “Furnishing of the New Head Office” whose construction cost in the 2016 budget was put at 7,912,502,911. Now, guess what. There is a budget for the “Consultancy of the Head Office Project” and 244,727,624 is budgeted for it. I am sorry; you will have to guess what again. Let me not stress you, 4,583,616,838 is budgeted for the “Completion of Ongoing New Head Office Building Construction” which 7,912,502,911 was budgeted for in 2016, bringing the total to 12,496,119,749. For those of you that numbers scare, that is over twelve billion Naira for the construction of the EFCC new head office. If the budget for the “Furnishing” of the same building is taken into consideration, it becomes almost fourteen billion Naira. That is the anti-corruption model; build a fourteen billion Naira edifice to scare corrupt individuals and firms.

The Bureau of Public Procurement has budgeted 52,957,485 for “Defence Software” and I find myself wondering when they became the Ministry of Defence. But things change, just like this government wants us to believe. I wish them a happy defence.

In the course of going through the 2107 budget, I noticed a significant change. There no longer existed a column to show the state of a project. Previous budgets had the “New” and “Ongoing” tags designated to line items, and it made it easier to understand or rather follow the money. We might not know, but that little omission, which I believe was on purpose, has the ability to make corrupt practices invisible.

The 2017 budget is beginning to look more like a shit-storm, but that shouldn’t be a problem because as you saw from the beginning, they started by budgeting generously for it.

We have come to the end of the first part of my budget analysis; hopefully, the second part will have something better to offer us.

When a sense of shame is lost - Pat Utomi

This article by Prof Pat Utomi was first published in the Punch Newspaper (Online Version) on Thursday December 15, 2016. It is shared for information purposes only.

I am not sure what to say about us, Nigerians. Should I praise the Nigerian spirit for resilience in the face of a misery index those from countries seen as the pits of hell want to get away from? Or, should one castigate the people of the country for acting like zombies as their inchoate economy retrenches further, facilities collapse in such a manner that a Nigeria regional manager for South African Airways uses words that suggest our major airports are epidemics waiting to break out? But if truth be told, what puzzles me the most about the Nigerian condition is the total loss of a sense of shame in people who hold positions of public authority in Nigeria. Their swagger in the face of South bound reality beggars belief.

A few years ago, I encountered the motto of a secondary school I fell totally in love with. But now I am wondering if the last line should not be doctored a bit. The motto urges students to work hard and play hard for

                 “When wealth is lost, nothing is lost

                   When health is lost, something is lost

                   When character is lost, all is lost.”

But I feel that extant experience suggests that when a sense of shame is lost, all is lost. Maybe, a fourth line should be when shame is lost nothing can be salvaged.

There is hunger and anger in the land. In some, desperation and despair stand up in a sharp relief. But you would not guess that when the Excellencies cruise past in long motorcades that drain the public treasury. How did we get this way?

I have struggled to understand how societies fail, in human history.  This is why I have found efforts of people like Jared Diamond to offer explanation, in Collapse, for example, quite intriguing. Given the place of my birth, it should not be a surprise that my biggest challenge has been Nigeria’s failure to make progress and the bigger tragedy of the phenomenon I have come to identify as progressive degeneration where, save a few examples, governments have been progressively worse, suggesting that learning is a problematic idea. That grabs my attention as a teacher, especially one who has done some work on organisational learning and know that unless the rate of learning in an organisation is equal to, or greater than the pace of change in the environment, Rewan’s axiom, the organisation is dinosaur-status bound.

The logic suggests that with climbing the learning curve and getting a return on Experience, those that follow should do better than the ones who bore the costs of errors not foreseen. But not so in the Nigerian experience. Compare governance and governing in Nigeria before 1975, with today.

Imagine current realities. The economy is inchoate and reeling from largely self-inflicted errors; the power sector is in disarray and manages to aggravate the misery index in ways difficult to describe to anyone who has never lived in Nigeria. The aviation sector is a pain merchant causing people hardships that make the fear of travel the beginning of wisdom. The roads as alternative means are not much to look to. After a recent road journey from Benin to Abuja, my body was clearly calling for medical help but I was afraid that to reach a doctor may result in iatrogenic intervention where the medicine could do more damage than the disease, evidently the case with policy and problems in the country. Elections have become wars and public office holders consume resources for infrastructure and growth, in the enjoyment of the perquisites of power.

All these may bring the normal to the brink of tears but they do not trouble me as much as the fact that those on whose watch a country is crumbling walk with such swagger you feel you have just left the requiem for a sense of shame. If shame has not been buried in Nigeria, all of us should be acutely worried that the state of things is the moral equivalence of war. Nations at war mobilise all available resources, define clear strategies. Few know which direction we are travelling and even many inside privately plead they are outsiders in government.

What is holding Nigeria back from doing what is right for the next generation to know progress? After much ponder, I am convinced the problem is culture; in particular, the culture of the dominant political actors in Nigerian history. Nigeria has suffered state capture since 1966 and the group of soldiers who ceased the Nigerian state that year, retain a firm grip 50 years after, even if crisis of legitimacy forced them from time to time to install fillers like the Shehu Shagari, Umaru Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan stop-gaps.

Culture matters. Long before the Harvard Colloquium on How Values Shape Human Progress, I was certain that culture had great consequences for progress. While people like the Peruvian economist, Hernando De Soto, down play culture in arguing that institutions are central to how man makes progress, my own Growth Drivers Framework, draws both, and a few other variables, into explaining why some countries are poor while their peers thrive.

So, the question remains, why did Nigeria stall when less favoured Asian counterparts surged forward in the 1980s? The so-called Resource Curse study at the World Bank in the mid-90s domiciled the problem with oil, to an extent, if you extrapolate. Then, oil boomed again in the first decade of the 21 century and oil producing Arabs like Qatar, UAE, and others developed dramatically. Again, Nigeria stalled. In my view, the class of 1966 cannot help itself. It was socialised into a view of triumph as the Hunt. The hunter mindset is kill and share, divide and rule. Nation-builders on the other hand, as farmers sow and water. They gather together those around so the pool of labour will make harvest easy. The class of 1966 is a class of hunters so that even though part of their entitlement mindset is that they fought a Civil War to unite Nigeria, the reality is that the nature of their hunter orientation manifests in conduct that has done more to disunite Nigeria than enemies of Nigeria could do if they desired its breakup. Because of their booty, war treasure, view of how they see government, the class of 66 sees all who suggest a different way to make the country move forward as scavengers looking for a piece of this bush meat they have hunted down. They lack the world view that there are people whose only motivation is to be proud of the Green passport they carry. So, they seek to incorporate those who are disposed to bowing before them and despise the independent-minded. They found clones who were governors between 1999 and recently. Those proved to be accelerators of the Nigeria collapse. Nothing better shows that than my fight with them around the need for savings. They squandered oil receipts with nothing to show. But they still swagger today, many still in government.

The culture of the class of 66 drove us, first hesitantly, then with deliberate speed into the crisp of a failing state. But it will be unfair to lay our downfall at the feet of the class of 66 alone. Our failure to speak truth to power, produced a generation that looked away rather than call a spade a spade. We were reduced to a generation that Bob Garrett would describe as “maliciously obedient to patent stupid instructions” from power.

The class of 1966 itself fractures roughly into three groups I label the Moderniser Wannabes; the Narcissistic Influencers and The Entitlement-Minded Praetorian Guard. In their intra-group competition, they sometimes pour out voluble, vengeful and vainglorious, vituperative vilifications; they unleash a vile, venomous, vexatious volume of vicious vendetta that numbs polity and poisons the investment climate. The effect on our political culture has been the gift of a cadre of political actors who care more for protocols, charter flights, presidential fleets, and motorcades than the fact that those they govern are living in conditions of great misery. They betray a failure to understand that leadership is other-centred conduct as self-love defines public choice.

I have never understood how people could sleep, chartering planes with taxpayers’ money, when many of the taxpayers cannot afford more primitive commutes to their places of subsistence eking out of a living. But if you understand the culture of the class of 1966, you will appreciate why it is a time of insensitivity to the plight of the rest of society.  An army of occupation can rationalise things in amazing logic.

I reflected on these ideas for years but as the engaged citizen, I looked for and worked at ways we could mitigate these tendencies. In 2015, the evidence came in fully. The class of 1966 is problematic beyond the “share the Gala, share the booze” mentality. The class of 1966 has crippled the dreams of two generations because entrenched in their culture is the absence of a sense of shame. I doubt that Nigeria will make progress until the eclipse of the class of 1966 is total.

Utomi, political economist and Professor of Entrepreneurship, is founder of the Centre for Values in Leadership

Incompetent Leaders

They assemble for us

They steal from us

They steal and run

And come back to run

They steal votes

But claim leadership

Can leaders be as ruthless?

Could followers follow without asking?

What about their little gods of filthy lucre and gluttony

Shall our God spare them still?

They assemble again like vultures

Waiting for us to be less cautious

They bounce and devour our cultures

Can a people be so unadventurous?

They are simply incompetent

Leaders, Incompetent Leaders

Who steal primitively?

Incompetent Leaders who lie eminently

Alas, competent thieves

John Onyeukwu

6 December 2010

PRESIDENT YAR’ ADUA: EXECUTIVE COUNCIL OF THE FEDERATION’S AFFIRMATION OF SHAME

It is saddening to know that the Executive Council of the Federation has sequel to a court order directing them to pronounce on the capacity of President Umaru Musa Ya’Adua to continue in office, concluded that he is indeed capable. While not totally unexpected given their foot dragging on the issue and the personal political interests, One would have expected that they would for once have allowed themselves to prove their integrity and patriotism.

When the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja directed them to exercise their duty under section 145 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, it envisaged a well reasoned and considered decision and not the rather insulting and shameful statement of the Executive Council of the Federation.

What the Executive Council did is proof that Nigerians can no more allow men and women who share no real stake in the nation other than the protection of personal political interests and material gains to rule over us like medieval Emperors and Courtiers.

It is no wonder that this group of Executive Council members has failed to deliver on any one of the so-called seven point agenda of the present administration. Instead they have become avid consumers of whatever services such as education, health and power, they superintend in foreign lands where leaders are accountable to the interests and aspirations of their people.

We want them to known that history would neither forgive nor forget them and, that they cannot determine the future of this nation as progressive elements would continue to explore available democratic options to move the country forward, to their shame.

John Onyeukwu

Convenor

Alliance for Integrity in Governance

 www.alliance4integrity.blogspot.com

PoliticalLogjam in Nigeria: Time to show leadership

PRESS STATEMENT

Political Logjam in Nigeria: Time to Show Leadership

The Alliance for Integrity in Governance is alarmed at the steady deterioration of the political situation in Nigeria. It is baffling how a simple Constitutional issue has assumed octopus proportions because of the self-serving and rather unpatriotic disposition of the nation’s leadership. AIG calls on all stakeholders to take concrete steps to get the nation back on the track of development rather than allowing things to remain as they are or worst still get worse.

The situation can be resolved by a simple application of the provisions of relevant sections of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, especially section 144. There is no ambiguity as to what should be done by the key stakeholders. The President’s failure to transmit a letter informing the Legislature of his absence in accordance with section 145 of the Constitution can be remedied either by the President himself (since he is sound enough to sign the 2009 Supplementary Budget and grant interview from his hospital bed), or  a resolution of the Federal Executive Council  and or the National Assembly.

The implication of allowing the situation remain unresolved is better imagined. As things stand there is no substantive Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces, the realisation of the administration’s 7 point Agenda has taken back seat in public discourse. There is a daily increase in public agitations as citizens gradually return to the barricades that they left pre 1999 elections, there is multiplication of litigations, which has the capacity to compromise the integrity of the judiciary given the level of influence peddling.

AIG believes that at times like this, we need leaders with integrity to step forward, keep political and personal interests apart and do the right thing in the interest of Nigeria and the much

abused and deprived ordinary citizens of Nigeria. We particularly implore all professionals in politics to show leadership and steer the nation aright.

The true test of leadership is the ability to subsume personal interests under national interests that serves the people and nation.

We cannot pretend that all is well while the nation halts.

 Signed for: Alliance for Integrity in Governance.

John Onyeukwu

Convenor

Monday 18 January 2010

www.alliance4integrity.blogspot.com

Now that Our President (Yar'Adua) Lives in Diaspora: The height of leadership Irresponsibility

The situation in Nigeria is as amusing as it is annoying. It shows the extent of rot in leadership in a country with limitless possibilities but unfortunate to be blessed with the worst crop of leaders anywhere in the world. Few days after the budget imbroglio over the venue for the presentation of the 2009 Federal Budget, the Presidential Spokesman, Segun Adeniyi announced that the president was due for medical check up in Saudi Arabia. Few days thereafter the nation was informed that the president is critically ill - He was said to be suffering from a heart condition known as acute pericarditis, (an inflammatory condition of the coverings of the heart).

The issue for most Nigerian’s is not that the president is sick. After all, he has always been. Who does not remember the now famous “Umoru, they say you are dead. Are you dead?” campaign call of former president Obasanjo or the fact that since assumption of office the president has spent 59 days outside the country on sundry medical treatments. How about his disappearance from the 27^th of August to the 6^th of September 2008, or the January 26 to February 8, 2009 leave inside Nigeria. It is no secret that the president has medical challenges but what baffles most right-thinking people (except Nigerian political office holders), is the official and unofficial responses from those whom Nigerians call their leaders.

First, the president failed, refused and or neglected to hand over to the Vice President as constitutionally provided for. The National Assembly, comprising the Senate and Federal House of Representatives simply asked Nigerians to fast and pray for the president’s recovery. The Federal Executive Council told us that all was well and that SOON the president would be home – first, within two weeks and then changed that to as soon as the Saudi doctors permit.

But the most telling response was that of the Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Michael Aondoakaa who retorted thus (when questioned as to the leadership vacuum inherent in the president’s refusal to hand over to the Vice President as constitutionally provided): ‘The powers of the President are not exercised territorially. Yar’ Adua can exercise his powers anywhere in the world, on the plane, at the meeting of the United Nations or even on his sick bed, as long as he is not incapacitated by the sickness."

While the dust raised by the Attorney General is yet to settle, Nigerians have just been informed by its Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Alhaji Abdullah Aminchi that the president is ‘sound and fit’, and “He is recuperating in a royal suite attached to the hospital for VIPs. He is sound and fit. He sits, eats and walks very well. He is recuperating to have enough rest before he goes back to the office,” Asked when the return might be he said that:  “It is the doctors who will say when.” (Punch Newspaper of Saturday 9^th January 2010 - online edition).

Ordinarily, the Ambassador’s statement would not have attracted my attention but against the background of the Attorney General’s statement and the recent act of taking the 2009 supplementary budget to Saudi Arabia for presidential assent, it does has grave implications.

If our president has recovered to the extent that the Ambassador described him as sound and fit, why does he prefer to stay back in Saudi Arabia rather than get into the next available presidential plane home? Does he not realise that as the President and Commander–in-Chief his duties are suffering and would continue to suffer unless he comes home (Even if he is not at his desk).

The reasonable conclusion is that our president has joined the millions of Nigerians in Diaspora, given that his Justice Minister has assured him that he could be president from anywhere so long as he has not been pronounced dead medically.

It is most disturbing that while the nation is literally on fire those who claim leadership are not interested in putting it out. They are afraid that addressing the issues at stake would deprive them of the spoils of office.

Nigeria has lost its respect and presence in the comity of nations. Our president did not make it to the last General Assembly of the United Nations because our president was sick and the Vice President could not go in his stead-The Foreign Minister’s presence was rightly regarded as a joke.

The last has not been heard on the recent change of guard at the Supreme Court, because the president is ill (now sound and fit) and the Vice President could not swear in the Chief Justice because he lacks the legal capacity to do so.

The Governors, Senators, Representatives and party leaders are all carrying on as if nothing is amiss. They think that they are better off playing the ostrich with the destiny of Nigeria and Nigerians. History has a way of extracting payment even though Nigeria is no example given the prominent role that antidemocratic elements continue to play despite their known opposition to democratic reforms.

If experience were anything to go by, I doubt that the reported debate on the President’s absence due in the Federal House of Representatives would make any difference . The Senators and House Members have shown that their interest is not in accord with the interest of those whom they claim to represent. Like the recent meeting of Governors `the ruling PDP, I doubt that they would say anything new from what they have been saying in the last 48 (then 50days) days of the president’s continuous absence- NOTHING. The Senate may make it more laughable by asking Nigerians to start a 30 days fasting and prayer session for the president to accept to come back home rather than remaining sound and fit Saudi Arabia.

Many times, I weep for the type and quality of leaders that we have in Nigeria. While leaders in other countries focus on how to better the lot of their nation and people, ours are more interested in how to up the bar of treasury looting than dealing with the development challenges that Nigerians face.

If President Yar’ Adua is sound and fit let him come back and recuperate among family friends and citizens in Nigeria rather than remain in Diaspora. If the President is still ill, let us do the right thing and save Nigeria and the people of Nigeria. The nation does not belong to any one person or small group of people but to long-suffering Nigerians who are in the majority and who bear the brunt of leadership irresponsibility.

It is obvious that Nigerians need to get back to the barricades in one form or the other to redeem the nation from the grip of the present crop of irresponsible leaders.

John Onyeukwu

Sunday 09 January 2010

onyeukwu@ovi.com