A policy and economic analyst, Mr Tope Fausa, has said that the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government has under-delivered to its campaign promises to Nigerians owing to them over-promising.
He said this on Friday while appearing on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
“I think that they over-promised and when you overpromise, you under-deliver. In fact, I too was Pro-Buhari as of 2015. Those who know me knew I went into several wars and this is not just about making mouth,” said Mr Fasua, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Global Analytics Consulting Limited.
“In fact, the first place where I was disappointed was that I expected the President to take the moral high-ground and declare his assets openly and not to tell us to go to the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) or using the Freedom of Information.
Mr Fasua compared Buhari’s approach to the declaration of assets to that of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, suggesting that the President missed an opportunity.
He said, “I believe that, like Yar’Adua had done in his time, it should have been easy and would have actually set the ball but that is that. I am not actually concerned about the performance of President Buhari now, I think the reality is on the ground. You can see exactly how things have panned out.
“What we should be concerned now is how to up the ante in governance to say exactly what are we doing? And you can see in South Africa, the national budget is $115bn, in Algeria it is $63bn, in Angola where they are not more than 10m or less, it is $44bn, in Egypt it is $45bn. In Nigeria, we are struggling with a national budget of 20 to $22bn.”
With regard to budgeting, the analyst was quick to point out that Nigeria had not fared well in prioritising budgets, a trend he doesn’t expect to change in 2018.
“Even the next one in 2018, is not going to be more than $25bn. Of course, we must dollarise everything at the end of the day because all of these economies are all import-intensive, especially Nigeria.
“If you look at it at the per-capita basis, how much is the Nigerian government budgeting per citizen? In SA, they are budgeting $1900 per person. In Algeria, $1600 per person, in Angola $1500 per person, in Egypt $520 per person, in Ghana $518 per person, but in Nigeria, the govt is budgeting $111 per person.
“If you divide that by 365 days a year, that means it is less than $0.3 In 2015, if you go by indices released by the NBS, we are not in a better place because we went deeper into recession after the govt took over and I think it was a couple of mismanagement here and there.”
