Nigeria’s cash-strapped government will likely do everything to meet its big-on-paper-light-on-impact budgets except one: cut its administrative cost.
The expenditures are an example of how Nigeria’s federal and state governments annually channel scarce public resources into projects that sustain their flashy lifestyles while critical programmes that should benefit citizens are perpetually underfunded. Nigeria’s public debt has risen the most under the Buhari administration when compared to previous governments since 1999, and foreign debt has grown three times more than the combined figure recorded by the past three administrations, a PREMIUM TIMES analysis showed.
“Spending billions of naira every year on routine maintenance of statehouse facilities is a huge waste. All statutory transfers are stated as lump-sum provisions without details. No person, government agency or organisation has the right in a constitutional democracy to spend public funds in a way and manner that is unknown to the ultimate sovereigns, being the taxpayers and citizens.”The spending on vehicles follows a trend.
In 2022, it hopes to spend N350 billion more on personnel costs and N167 billion more on the overheads than it did in 2021. Those two expenditure categories also exceed the cash Africa’s largest economy intends to commit to developmental projects in 2022, estimated at N4.89 trillion.The rising expenditure is of concern even to the government. In October, the finance minister, Zainab Ahmed, said the government was incurring huge debt as a result of a bloated payroll.
The head of the government’s budget office, Ben Akabueze, however, had a slightly different opinion from the minister’s position about big spending. He disagreed the country’s expenditure base was “large” and said Nigeria was indeed spending too little and had the lowest expenditure to GDP ratio in all of Africa.Mr Akabueze, however, argued the government needs to spend smartly and effectively on important things.
What do you expect from.a corrupt government.
The disastrous Nigerian system is obviously irredeemable... You have the most corrupt people in the world posing as angels of light.. see the one that say he's a poor man & a friend of the poor looting billions everyday.
MBuhari budgeted 1.6b dollars for his cars & 650m for Mambila project. This is highest grave of insincerity & gross violation of leadership & responsibility. at this point, If you still see MBuhari as a Messiah, you are far from fear of God, you should be seen as a Monster.
You wasting premium time on here.