Days after Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s acting president, signed a $23 billion budget, a presidential aide says the record deficit budget will be partly funded with loot recovered from the administration’s anti-corruption fight. Okoi Obono-Obla, a presidential aide on prosecution, told journalists that, subject to approval by the national assembly, “about 20%” of the 2017 budget will be financed through recovered loot. If true, that suggests that the government has recovered up to $4.6 billion in looted funds.
Nigeria needs the extra funds as its economy has been mired in recession for over five quarters and with oil prices unlikely to rebound soon to the highs of 2014, there is no easy path to quick revenue growth for Africa’s largest oil producer.

The new budget, which has been long delayed partly due to the absence of president Buhari on sick leave, has a fiscal deficit of $7.5 billion which will be funded by borrowing. According to Premium Times, it was unclear if the 20% was of the total budget or the self-financed part of the budget.


Since taking office in May 2015, beating corruption has formed a core of Buhari’s administration with officials from the previous government currently facing long-running cases for embezzlement of government money. Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign has also hit members of his own team. In April, the president suspended two high-profile appointees over corruption allegations. But with court cases and probes generally taking much longer to unravel, the government has changed tack over the past seven months.


In December, it introduced a whistle-blowing policy to allow Nigerians report corruption and fraud-related offenses. While cases also ended up in court, the anonymous tips were set up to help the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, gather damning evidence much quicker. As an incentive, whistleblowers can receive a cut of up to 5% if tips result in successful recovery of looted funds. So far, the strategy appears to be working as EFCC has made some high profile cash discoveries.


In April, thanks to a whistle-blower’s tip, EFCC turned up bundles of cash in dollar, pound sterling and naira currencies totaling $43.4 million in an empty apartment in Lagos’ upmarket Ikoyi neighborhood. Last week, a court ordered the final forfeiture of the money to the government. An earlier tip in February also saw the agency uncover a cash haul of $9.8 million from a former director at Nigeria’s state oil company.


At the time Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s minister of information, said the EFCC had recovered over $180 million thanks to the whistle-blowing policy.
While recoveries due to the policy are still way short of the $4.6 billion mark, the EFCC has also recovered funds through plea bargain deals with looters to avoid trial and save “valuable court time and state resources.”


Curled from Quartz Africa
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1. The 2017 Budget Preparation process was a much more efficient process than the 2016 process. There was also less acrimony regarding it, between the Executive and Legislature.

2. The 2017 Budget was collated using — for the first time ever — a web-based application developed by the Budget Office of the Federation (BOF). Instead of the traditional method of hard copy submissions of budget proposals, Ministries, Departments and Agencies were asked to upload their proposals to the new budget preparation portal, resulting in a more efficient and transparent preparation process.

3. More than 4,000 staff of the MDAs were specially trained to use the new application, across multiple locations nationwide. To support the deployment of the budget portal, the Budget Office set up a Helpdesk, accessible by telephone and email, for authorised users.

4. President Buhari presented the 2017 Budget Speech to a Joint Session of the National Assembly on December 14, 2016.

5. The National Assembly passed the Budget on May 11, 2017, five months after it was submitted by President Buhari.

6. The next step, which should have been the signing of the Budget by the Executive, was delayed because of disagreements regarding some alterations the National Assembly made to the submitted document — for example the National Assembly reduced proposed budgets for a number of critical infrastructure projects (the standard gauge railway projects, the Mambilla Power Project, the Second Niger Bridge, the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway etc), and applied the difference to fund some new projects introduced by the legislators.

7. What followed were four weeks of painstaking engagement between Executive and Legislature, to resolve the differences.

8. The conclusion of the engagement/negotiations is that all the funds removed by the National Assembly from those critical infrastructure projects will be restored during the course of the budget year. The leadership of the National Assembly has assured the Executive that this will be done, through a process known as "Virement".

9. The Executive and the National Assembly have reached an agreement to return the Federal Government to a January–December budget calendar, starting from the 2018 budget. To ensure this happens the Executive has committed to submitting the 2018 budget to the National Assembly by October 2017, and on its part the Assembly has committed to passing the budget into law before the end of 2017.

10. Budget Highlights:
Oil price: $44.5 per barrel
Daily Production: 2.2m barrels per day
Exchange Rate: US$1 = N305

a. Total expenditure of N7.441 trillion, comprising N5.08 trillion in revenues and a projected deficit of N2.36 trillion which will largely be financed by borrowing. (The 7.441 trillion is 143 billion Naira more than the original amount proposed by the Executive when President Buhari submitted the Budget in December 2016)

b. N2.18 trillion for capital expenditure (principally infrastructure).

c. More than N700 billion for investments in roads, rail, ports, power and housing projects

d. N46 billion for Special Economic Zone Projects to be set up in each geopolitical zone

He said, “We are here debating a subject that the educational system is not teaching and people do not understand it and the federal government of Nigeria do not recognise it. A fundamental problem is our educational system. We must address the problem at the source.


“What is the problem? We are the problem. It is Biafra, it could be south-south tomorrow or north-east, it doesn’t matter. This must be addressed. Our educational is one of the worst I have ever seen anywhere in the world, it is terrible, our policy of information makes no sense whatsoever and here we are talking about an impending crisis.

“Government should pay attention to history, there is a way out but to pretend or remove bight of Biafra from the map, nobody has the right to the bight of Biafra from the map, put it back on the map and let’s fix our problem"

The Senator observed that other countries televise their history of wars in order avoid the repetition of their past mistakes in the future.


Bruce lamented that the government has done “absolutely nothing” to educate youths agitating for a secession.

He said, “The reason they televise these wars is so that you can learn from the mistake of others, so that you do not become a fool and make the same mistakes and fight again. So, here we are, fifty years later talking about something that could be avoided if the federal government at the time understood the value of history.

“We erased the civil war from our consciousness, so generations of people do not know we fought the war or why we fought the war, they say the Igbos, were marginalised, right? But today they are the most industrious in the country, they are the richest Nigerians in the country today and amongst one of the most educated people.

“Yet they feel marginalised, if you compare, the Igbo man to other sectors of the society, you will say the Igbos are the privileged because of what we have. Yet, a generation of Igbos say they have been marginalised and they want to secede and want a nation.

“But what have we done as a nation to educate them on destruction and war – absolutely nothing. They don’t teach these in our history books. We do not tell our children what war is all about. Those talking about bloodshed have not even carried a gun.”

Some people really think they have an opinion to share even though it's from a misinformed state of mind. One of the advantages of the Internet is, it has afforded this kinda people a platform to air their views... School in Nigeria with a malfunction institutions, you need to be an outlier & think outside the box to talk and do differently... We have example of nations that were more diverse and populated than Nigeria and still went on to use this as a strength to build a great nation. Things sometimes gets wrong to get right. All foundations are builds differently. If ours wasn't well laid, we are not too old to rebuild, reform and restructure... No great nation had it easily. Do your research and prove me wrong! The problem is everybody wants it sharp sharp in Nigeria. That's why we have the yahoo boys, kidnappers, cases of armed robbery and all manner of social vices I the country... Nobody wants to do due diligence and be patient to start a business or a movement and be patient to watch it grow and flourish. But people, businesses and even nations that has endured, tolerated, and worked diligently has been proven to be great and successful

Nigerian politicians play the marginalisation card to get into power or privileged positions so they can start the looting spree. Marginalization in Nigeria, if you ask me, has no ethnic, tribal or religious colouration. It is the norm everywhere and anywhere you go in Nigeria. It is caused by corruption and the refusal of the ruling elite, even down to the local government chairman, to act with justice and fairplay- to know that whatever resources you are managing, are being held in trust for the whole state and every town and hamlets in the local government, and not your money to be wasted and stolen with impunity with out consequences. The truly marginalized Nigerians are;

The Nigerian people as a whole, east or west, north and south, who have been persistently lied to and denied their fundamental human right to choose their leaders, even during so called bogus democratic rule.

The 40 million unemployed Nigerian youths, some of them with second degrees, with no work to do and no earning, no income in their prime age where their productivity to the nation would have been greater, but are allowed to pine away with no hope and faith in Nigeria. The ladies who end up as local prostitutes and those “lucky” enough become international prostitutes in Italy, Holland and other European cities. Many of them go through illegal emigration in desperation, some never seen or heard of again, probably dead of hunger and thirst in the Sahara desert, or dead as they try to cross the Mediterranean Sea with ram shackled boats into Europe.

The low paid Nigerian workers who are expected to live on a minimum wage of N18,000 a month, many with nuclear and extended families to cater for their needs in a country where staggering unemployment statistic is hardly of any bother to the political leaders. And this salaries are not even assured at the end of the month.


The lower ranked military personnel- who have to defend the territorial integrity of Nigeria and fight for our freedom on very low pay as well as, yes I do mean it, police officers- those who are forced to take N50 in road checkpoints, some of them illegally placed roadblocks for extortion and oppression of mostly commercial road users and drivers. Their higher ranked officers are the criminals that steal even monies meant for their uniforms and sometimes deny them their low wages for months because of their greed!

The vulnerable people of Nigeria: Amongst these are the children, many forced into child labour, out of school due to no fault of theirs, denied the innocence of their youth, especially those raped by rampaging male/female wolves (it could be both sexes); the old age people who should be enjoying a pension or some form of social security but are denied these by the excessively greedy politicians at all levels, at a time they were supposed to enjoy the remaining part of their lives.

All other Nigerians denied basic infrastructure like a decent hospital for treatment of their diseases and ailments whilst the rampaging elites take themselves and their wards to foreign clinics at the berth of a headache; those denied a properly funded schools for their children and many Nigerians who die or are maimed daily on dilapidated poorly funded or ill maintained roads.

These are truly the marginalised peoples of Nigeria- not the political wolves that use “marginalisation” as a smokescreen to commit more atrocities on the peoples’ of Nigeria, and so long as these ills and abnormally are not addressed Nigeria will be plunged into a wild wild west!

[b]I realized that all the comments here never takes cognizance of other ethnic groups... Can you see now that even you is guilty of the marginalization. What about the other ethnic groups? You and people who think like you is the reason why Nigeria is still undervedeveloped.

#MYOPIC THINKING AT ITS CORE

Obama, a black man and a major minority won an election in the United States. Yet we have people with the same color, that can't even tolerate and stand each other. I mean think about it. The leaders have propagated this since time immemorial to win election and to constantly loot the and swindle the people of their birthright.

Now we have a generation of so called educated and internet savvy youths still riding on this wave of ignorance. That is deplorable. Check your education sir/ma. It's just an evidence of a product of our dis-functional socialization system. I mean religion, schools, peer group etc.

How long can we keep living like this? Things has to change or else the next generation will not even be able to sleep with their eyes closed.

Let's take all this agitation to our leaders in our constituentcies, the change starts from the constitution. It's archaic and needs to be reformed and restructured to reflects equal opportunities.

#No more state of origin
#No more quota system
#No more religion on certificates & I believe in God. But I don't need to worry you about it

All this are some of the issues that needs urgent attention!
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[b][b]Now, you see, every section complaining of marginalization. Marginalization is engrained in the system. It is a structural problem that cannot be solved by secession or eviction. It is a problem that can only be solved wholisticly through restructuring or reformation as the case may be.

Marginalization between the rich & poor exist, between regions, and even within regions. So, let's all sit down & look at our constitution. That is where the solution starts from. In my opinion it's archaic and needs to be improved to meet changing demands and realities of today. Why can't people from the so called minorities come out and be sure to be voted for on the basic of merit instead of where they from?
Why can't admissions be given fairly on merit instead of the so called quota system practiced today?

If you are still thinking secession or eviction. You are being myopic and not different from the people that brought us to the debacle we find ourselves today.

I believe this is all happening at a great time. Time to answer all this questions and put them to rest permanently. I enjoined all youths, Nigeria belongs to us all, let's stand up & be the change for the next generation. It's time to stand up & be counted. Hold yourself responsible. Nobody is gonna solve this problem but us.

HELLO,

I MADE FIFTY NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR ME AND MY PARTNERS IN MY FIRST AGRO EXPORT THIS YEAR.
IF YOU REALLY WANT TO EARN FOREIGN EXCHANGE TRADING COMMODITIES AND YOU ARE WILLING TO PARTNER WITH A PROVEN RESULT GUY. CONTACT ME VIA petermomoh25@gmail.com

GET IN TOUCH WITH ME AND FOCUS ON YOUR CORE COMPETENCE AND LET ME DO WHAT I DO BEST SO WE CAN ALL WIN TOGETHER.

THANK YOU

PETER MOMOH

A great initiative by this government. Looking forward to speedy implementations of this policies.
Most times, you don't have all the answers by observing, You learn along the way as you make progress.