A cross-section of Nigerians and leaders of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have called on President Muhammadu Buhari and members of the National Assembly to ensure that the proposed N10.729 trillion for the 2020 fiscal year impact on key sectors of the economy that will touch on the lives of Nigerians.
Executive Director Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Auwal Musa Rafsanjani; Director of Programmes for Social Action, Mrs. Vivian Bellonwu and a fourth term member of the 9th Assembly, Hon. Uzoma Nkem-Abonta expressed the concerns during separate interviews conducted by Tribune Online in Abuja, called for adequate allocation to the health, education, roads and power as well as the real sector of the economy.
They also frowned at the poor implementation level of the capital component of the annual Appropriation Acts, ranging between 30 to 40 per cent.
In his overview of Nigeria’s budgeting process, Rafsanjani, tasked President Muhammadu Buhari to prioritise three key sectors, namely: health, education and agriculture.
“While we encourage the National Assembly to thoroughly scrutinise the budget to avert wastage, duplication and corruption in the Appropriation Bill, we equally advocate for increased priority to critical areas like health, education and agriculture. Under-funded health budget remains a serious challenge in the delivery of adequate, affordable and accessible level of care, especially at Primary Health Care level in the country.
“With clear provisions of the global developmental commitment for health, agriculture and education as enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Nigeria is yet to showcase appreciable holistic action plans to concretise these commitments in her budgetary allocations.
“Our Primary Health Care system is in a state of total collapse with dilapidated structures decorated with expired drugs and cobwebs and have become in many places inhabitants for domestic animals. Corruption impedes both national and donors’ efforts at providing appropriate and timely vaccination of new-borns; just as it reduces the satisfaction of households with public health services.
“Also, adequate budgetary allocation to agricultural sector is paramount to address accelerating food insecurity arising from food importation, and rising youth unemployment level. Small, Medium and Extensive agricultural production should be encouraged to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture in the country.
“Furthermore, allocation to education sector must ensure all-inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities to mitigate existing avertable and unfavourable indices of out-of-school children in Nigeria, while promoting literacy skills at all levels.
“More importantly, both the Executive and Legislative arms must reduce the systemic excessive cost of governance that hitherto renders public services inefficient and inaccessible. Without appropriate effort to reduce the existing cost of governance, it would be difficult to achieve desired and people-oriented allocation to the aforementioned sectors to fulfil citizens’ development expectations and aspirations from the proposed budget.”
Mr. Auwal who expressed displeasure over the culture of poor implementation of the previous Appropriation Acts as well as the budget deficit called for a paradigm shift in the 2020 fiscal year.
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“The delay release and implementation of the health care provisions as contained in the Appropriation Act constituted a major impediment to the operationalisation of Primary Health Care provisions in the National Health Act 2014.
“This also to large extent back-pedalled adequate, affordable and accessible care at all levels. This same delay experienced across other critical sectors like education and agriculture. The previous budget was identified with needless allocations to fund legislators’ projects.
“This to us is not the primary responsibility of the legislators but Executive arm. As a result, needless delay was experienced. Also, political tensions and uncertainty that surround the 2019 general elections coupled with Executive-Legislative face-off did not allow desired constructive scrutiny of the Appropriation Bill. We hope the challenges will be addressed henceforth,” Mr. Auwal opined.
In the same vein, Head, Social Action Advocacy Department, Mrs. Vivian Bellonwu, applauded the present administration for breaking the jinx of delayed budget estimate presentations. She, however, harped on the need to allocate funds to critical sectors such as education, health, manufacturing and construction.
“On the planned 2020 budget presentation; kudos on the early presentation of the 2020 Appropriation, it is good and should be sustained as it is needful for proper economic planning and management. In view of the state of the country, I expect the budget to lean strongly towards social and infrastructure sectors. In this regard, education and health should be given strong attention to improve the quality of lives of the citizenry, while real sectors like manufacturing and construction should receive robust attention in the budget.
“This is in view of the trigger cum multiplier effects and capacity of these sectors on other aspects of the economy including unemployment and GDP rates which are presently in abysmal proportions. I also expect that still in line with this, the government should focus to apply the budget on concretely resuscitating both dead as well as moribund or comatose industries that line the length and breadth of the country.
“This will properly put the teeming youthful energy and human resources to good use and thus drastically reduce the nightmare of crimes and security challenges the country is facing and the associated huge budgetline for fighting the same.
“In any case, Nigerians have not been happy with the level of implementation of previous budgets, rightly so when the budgets were overwhelmed with debts (servicing), leaving little or no rooms for real capital development. It is in this guise that many vital projects such as roads (Lagos-Ibadan road, Lokoja-Okene road, Enugu-Port Harcourt road and teeming others), that are of critical import to not only the economy of the country but the safety and security of lives of Nigerians as well, have featured in the nation’s budgets for years on end but still uncompleted with gruelling difficulties by citizens and associated avoidable losses.
“Both the Executive and the Legislative should work hand-in-hand to ensure that the 2020 budget marks a good departure in both policy and practice from that of the previous years so that budget could begin to have real impact and make real meaning to the ordinary Nigerian.”
While venting his views of the previous Appropriation laws, a fourth-term member of the House of Representatives and former Chairman, House Committee on Public Petitions in the 8th Assembly, Hon. Uzoma Nkem-Abonta frowned at the high budget deficit and the need to opt for a more realistic budget in succeeding fiscal year.
“Look at our budget, can you call that a realistic budget? If we budget 7 trillion we implement 4 or 5 (trillion naira), then we should be able to do a realistic budget that will face our needs, that will face the realities of time, that will focus on the core areas, we don’t budget for the sake of budgeting, we should budget for the sake of our need! Something that is doable, otherwise it will be rhetorics.”
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