Presidency’s vehicle budget

A close study of any country’s budget will quickly reveal the truth about what its priorities are and where it is clearly headed. It indicates whether a country is toeing the path of growth and development or the path of brazen consumption. Glimpses of Nigeria’s 2022 budget as outlined recently are not any different. Mired in dire straits, the budget is premised on heavy loans for its entire financing.

Shockingly, snippets of the budget show the lack of national pride on the part of the establishment which, in its wisdom or lack of it, has chosen to rely on loans to finance projects. Nigerians would certainly find it hard to imagine that the economic, social and political miasma in which the country is mired  has not discouraged the supposedly austere President Muhammadu Buhari from voting N7.6 billion for the phased replacement of parts of the presidential fleet of vehicles but a measly N650 million for the Mambilla power project, which is so critical to infrastructure and economic growth.

To be sure, the centrality of the various power projects across the country seems quite unclear to the country’s leadership which, since the Fourth Republic democratic experiment began in 1999, has spent a humongous amount of the country’s resources to fix the sector, albeit without much success. According to an investigation by Premium Times, the administrations of Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari reportedly expended N1.164 trillion on the country’s power projects in the last eight years without any power for domestic and industrial consumption. This is not to ignore the alleged $16 billion that President Olusegun Obasanjo spent on power projects.

Of a truth, successive leaderships have been serially complicit in the power conundrum in Nigeria despite the critical value of the sector in reviving the economy. We however find it ridiculous, not to say atrocious, that President Buhari voted more money for the replacement and spare parts of the presidential fleet of vehicles than the Mambilla power project. This speaks volumes about the country’s backwater status in the comity of nations. It is a reflection of our values as a people who are in the throes of political misdirection, and who need an urgent rescue operation. Any hope of reviving the country’s economy through the power sector will remain forlorn with this pathetic budget proposal. Just how can anyone vote a measly N650 million for a power project while the replacement of the presidential fleet of vehicles takes N7.6 billion?

It is really sad and regrettable that President Buhari does not seem to share any sense of urgency regarding the need to rescue the country’s economy from imminent collapse. It really beggars belief that the 2022 budget is going to be funded with loans, and yet it reeks of a kind of profligacy that more than boggles the mind. How indeed can a hemorrhaging economy like Nigeria be subjected to the untold pressures of supporting and funding that kind of profligacy? It’s extremely cruel, not to say  callous, to allow Nigerians to bear such pains.