On 11 November, 2015, President Buhari appointed Udoma
as Minister of Budget and Planning. Six weeks later, the
president presented the 2016 budget to the National
Assembly. This makes the budget an inevitable casualty of
timing. A new Nigerian president is sworn in at the end of
May in an election year. He is expected to have his cabinet
in place by June. That would give a Minister of Budget and
Planning six months to work on a budget.
However, when Buhari became president in the middle of an
economic crisis, the first thing he did was to squander the
first five months. In that time, anti-corruption propaganda
became a substitute for policy. The economy nose-dived;
going from bad to worse. Queried about the delay in
choosing his cabinet, the president bad-mouthed
anticipated ministers as “noise-makers.” When he finally
succumbed to the Constitution by unfolding his Cabinet, the
year had virtually come to an end.
Udoma is a man well-prepared for public office. However, in
the short-term, he will have to defend as, a team-player
minister, a budget unlikely to be his brainchild. Udoma
could not have known he would be the Minister of Budget
and Planning. But now he has to defend a budget he could
not have planned. Frankly, there are a number of things in
this budget that are indefensible.
In the medium-term, Udoma is in the unenviable position of
being an economics minister to a president who clearly has
very limited understanding of economics. Worse-still, he is
minister to a president who castigates ministers as noise-
makers. That indicates Buhari is not likely to be open to
wise counsel. It would not surprise me if schemes like the
ante-diluvian counter-trading are mooted again from Aso
Rock sooner or later.
Pretend Budget
The first thing that becomes noticeable in the 2016 budget
is that it is a budget of pretension. Nigeria is still a
monocultural economy. The oil, on which the lionshare of
the nation’s income depends, has suffered a drastic decline
in price in the international market. But the government has
decided to pretend as if nothing has happened. No austerity
whatsoever is entertained. As a matter of fact, in the name
of stimulating the economy, the president has decided to
present a budget that assumes Nigeria has suddenly
become richer overnight, when in fact we have become
poorer.
Buhari presents N6.08trn 2016 budget to NASS
This is a very neat trick. In 2015, the total federal budget
was N4.45 trillion naira. In 2016, in the middle of an
economic downturn, this has been increased dramatically to
N6.08 trillion. The new 2016 budget is based on the price of
oil being $38 a barrel, ignoring the fact that the price has
already fallen below that to $36. Indeed, the IMF projects
the price might fall even further in 2016 by $5 to $15;
bringing it down to as low as $20. But the government is
not prepared to contemplate that eventuality. How can the
APC enjoy the trappings of power if, after so long in the
political wilderness, its turn is now to be constrained by
austerity?
Therefore, observe the following contradictions. In the
middle of looming economic adversity, the government has
decided to be even more profligate than the previous
administration. For example, in 2014, the budget for Aso
Rock was N12 billion. In 2015, President Jonathan
judiciously reduced this to N6.6 billion. But in 2016, Buhari
has raised this by 50% to N18 billion. One of the more
ludicrous aspects of this is the N3.6 billion earmarked for
the purchase of an unspecified number of BMW saloon cars!
Clearly, there will be no austerity in Aso Rock in 2016. As a
matter of fact, it would appear that elephants will be on the
menu for lunch. A whopping N1.75 billion has been
budgeted for feeding in Aso Rock in 2016. Goodluck
Jonathan was pilloried for spending N1 billion in 2011. He
reduced this to N717 million in 2013; N542 million in 2014;
and N530 million in 2015. But now Buhari has decided to
increase this by more than 100%. N115 million is budget

N115 million is budgeted
for foodstuffs and catering materials for President Buhari
alone, an increase of over 64% above that of President
Jonathan.
If you were of the view that the president has spent too
much of his honeymoon period gallivanting abroad this
year, think again. N1.4 billion has been allocated for his
travel expenses in 2016; N470 million more than that of
Jonathan in 2015. The maintenance of the 10 aircraft
presidential fleet that the president attacked as wasteful
when he was asking Nigerians for our votes will cost N3.6
billion in 2016. N764 million is budgeted for the
construction of recreational facilities just for Mr. President.
The same lavishness is also proposed for the vice-
president. Not to be left out, the National Assembly will cost
us nothing less than N115 billion.
These are the kinds of changes the APC has in store for
Nigeria in fiscal 2016.
Voodoo Buharinomics
Where is the money for all the extra expenditures in 2016
supposed to come from given the sharp reduction in our
income? There is a lot of talk about squeezing more money
out of taxation, creating greater efficiencies in the MDAs,
and generating more income from agriculture and solid
minerals. But it is just talk.
Only N29 billion is devoted to the Ministry of Agriculture,
while more money, N39 billion, is earmarked for Ministry of
Information and Culture. But of course, Lai Mohammed has
already told us he plans to have one cultural festival a day,
365 days in 2016; although he has already missed a few
days.
Principally, the government has decided to go a-borrowing.
It proposes to borrow N1.88 trillion in 2016; 30.9% of the
total budget; N1 trillion more than was borrowed in 2015.
This is where the whole thing gets even more ludicrous.
When the APC came to power, the first thing it attacked was
Nigeria’s debt-profile under the previous Jonathan
administration. Vice-President Osinbajo complained that:
“Our economy is currently in perhaps its worst moment in
history. Local and international debt stands at $60 billion.”
The APC answer to this predicament is now to borrow more
in 2016 than we did in 2015. Osinbajo complained that our
debt-servicing bill in 2015 was N953 billion. How then are
we to understand the APC decision to increase that debt-
servicing bill to N1.8 trillion in 2016; an increase of nearly
100%. Osinbajo complained that our debt-servicing bill was
21% of the budget under Jonathan in 2015. But now under
Buhari, 30.9% of the total federal budget in 2016 is going to
be financed by debt.
Suddenly, the same government that complained it inherited
a huge burden of debt from the PDP now argues that Nigeria
is under-borrowed. That is the new truth now being dished
out by government spin-doctors. Kemi Adeosun, the new
Finance Minister, now says Nigeria’s debt to GDP ratio is
low at 12%. She compares this conveniently to Angola
(57%) and South Africa (48%).
In which case, our indebtedness is no longer an albatross.
Since the APC has replaced the PDP at the centre, we can
now borrow as much as we like. This is all well and good.
Except that it is exactly how we got into the debt
predicament of the 1980s and 1990s. It means in 2016, we
will spend N4 billion every day on debt-servicing.
Productive debt
The government promises that, this time, it is only going to
borrow for capital projects. But it cannot tell us precisely
what these capital projects are. All we have are promissory
notes that they will be for infrastructural projects like roads,
rails and power supply. However, promissory notes from
this APC government are no longer worth a dime.
In 2015, the federal budget was N4.5 trillion. Nevertheless,
the government was able to gather as much as N1.5 billion
into the TSA account. This represents money not spent from
previous budgets. This should tell us that we did not even
have the capacity to spend what we earned. Monies voted
for recurrent expenditure gets gobbled up more or less. But
capital projects are either ignored, uncomple

uncompleted, or big
chunks of the earmarked money are stolen.
What the government now proposes to do is to increase
even that usually unspent money, without first fixing the
underlying lack of capacity-utilization. Since the
government actually has no structural anti-corruption
policy, beyond declaring its enemies guilty without trial, all
that might happen here is that we are simply making more
money available for graft.
Then there is the brilliant idea of employing 500,000
graduates as teachers in the rural areas. Quite apart from
the difficulty of assembling and equipping these graduates,
the cost of the project is prohibitive. A modest 50,000
monthly wage bill will come to N300 billion per annum,
while the total amount allocated for education is N369
billion.
My conclusion is simple. The APC won the election in the
wrong country. The government should be shipped
elsewhere; perhaps to France.