The Executive Director, Centre for Social Justice, Mr Eze Onyekpere, has described as frivolous, inappropriate and wasteful, some aspects the 2018 budget estimate.
He stated this while appearing as a guest on Channels Television’s daily political programme, Politics Today.
“You have items that are inappropriate and should not be put in our budget considering the austere times and challenges every Nigerian is facing,” he said.
According to him, the budget proposal is filled with some manipulative words meant to syphon money from some Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government.
He added, “The MDAs are deliberately playing on words. In the Ministry of Agriculture, for instance, you have a huge vote – N5billion, N10 billion they say is a value chain. What is your definition of a value chain?
“In the Ministry of Women Affairs, they play on such words as empowerment and sensitisation for various hundreds of millions of Naira. What exactly do those words mean?
“Then there are those words that are outrightly wasteful for which we cannot find a real purpose for them.”
While lamenting a situation whereby virtually every MDA insisted on putting a foreign brand name into the budget, Onyekpere recalled the ‘Made in Nigerian’ campaign launched President Buhari and the Nigerian Vehicle Manufacturing and Assembly plant.
The consequence of this action, he explained, would mean that the capital budget implementation when the money is eventually released, would not have an impact on the nation’s economy in terms of creating jobs through the plants, increment in the government’s tax, enlargement of the economy among others.
Onyekpere is of the view that the issue of alleged diversion of public funds would continue resurfacing in the annual budgets because our leaders have not yet shown the needed zeal to curb the menace.
Sharing a similar view on the programme, legal practitioner, Mr Kurtis Adigba, accused the members of the National Assembly of not being transparent in the oversight functions with respect to the nation’s budget.
“The National Assembly itself that is supposed to play the oversight functions, they are also not very transparent about their budget. Their budget is opaque, they just give you only the figure,” he said.
While calling for ‘serious’ reforms in the system, Adigba threw his weight behind his co-discussant, Onyekpere of the need to have people who were ‘reform-minded’ to make this happen.
To him, the lawmakers have a crucial role in ensuring that the transparency Nigerians were yearning for was being actualised, especially with regards to the nation’s annual budget.
