Dr. Ben Akabueze is the Director-General, Budget Office. In this interview, the former Lagos Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, outlines efforts of the Federal Government at reviving the economy with the 2018 budget and its import on Nigeria’s future. Excerpts:
The Federal Government earmarked N4.9 billion for annual electrical maintenance in the Presidential Villa, Aso Rock. Can it justify such figure?
The Villa is quite an expansive edifice with several residences and support services; so as significant as N4.9 billion sounds, it is not too much to keep those facilities in top shape, as they are now. Anyone who has been to the Villa will appreciate that it is one of the best-maintained edifices in the country.
The government also proposed N2.2 billion and N1.14 billion for the Directorate of Secret Service’s social media mining suite, and cleaning and fumigation of the Office of the National Security Adviser respectively. Are they not too much also?
The cleaning and fumigation of the office of NSA is not the type of cleaning and fumigation that you and I know, as matters of security are treated with some degree of confidentiality. It could be cleaning and fumigation of some criminal elements. The DSS planned to execute some security protocol to curtail the spread of false information, which they think could threaten national security.
The Villa is quite an expansive edifice with several residences and support services; so as significant as N4.9 billion sounds, it is not too much to keep those facilities in top shape, as they are now
Don’t you think the DSS’ plans could hinder the right to freedom of expression for Nigerians?
They have assured us that their intention is not to hinder freedom of expression. But again, different countries in the world agree with this and that’s the reality of our world today.
Critics are bothered that the government plans to spend about 30 percent of the budget on personnel costs. What is the staff strength of the government that would gulp such fortune and are their plans to right-size?
The President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is also concerned and that is the reason it is making efforts to ensure that only people who are validly engaged by the government are being paid. We can’t contemplate on reducing personnel now because the economy is just emerging from recession and growth is still fragile. If we do that, we will only exacerbate the economic problems.
How many workers are on the payroll of the government?
The number of people employed and catered for in this budget which includes the police, military, healthcare workers and the rest is a little over a million people. While that is a little over five percent of the population, the public servants have a lot of people they cater for and to do that, you have to multiply that by five to 10 people.
The African Development Bank recently disclosed that about 152 million Nigerians live below $2 a day and that poverty is on the increase. What are the plans of the government to tackle poverty with the 2018 budget?
The issue of poverty is of concern to the government but it’s debatable: whether poverty is actually on the increase or not. The government speaks to poverty through the budget from 2016 when the government sustained the provision of N500 billion for the social investment programme, which has a lot of components, including skill development, entrepreneurship’s support, conditional cash transfer and the home-grown school feeding and now, a social housing scheme.
One of the most effective ways to reduce poverty is to create jobs and so, any job creation initiative is a poverty reduction programme. There are programmes targeted at poverty reduction;across the Ministries, Departments, and Agencies of government.
Some MDAs make regular provisions for computers, computer software, and vehicles, among others, in their budget every year. How do you tackle these repetitions?
It is not repetition. For instance, at the budget office, we have 450 personnel and if everybody is to have a computer and we bought 50 computers in a year, it will take several years before you can get a computer to every employee. And even if you take a ratio of two employees per computer, it would take you five years to buy enough computers for everybody.
Again, given the rate at which these things go obsolete; within three years, you have to replace them. So it’s inevitable that you see an agency providing for computers and this is being done within the limits of the resources available to them that year. It doesn’t mean that their needs have been covered.
The same thing goes for vehicles. The Budget Office didn’t buy vehicles for seven years and in 2017, we provided for the replacement of some of the vehicles. Also, in 2018, you will again see the budget for vehicles. It’s not feasible to replace all the vehicles in one year.
Operators in the real sector sometimes blame their ills on the non-predictability of the budget, which they argue hinder them from planning effectively. What is your take on this?
It is important to bring predictability into the timing of the budget and if, as a country, we decide that January to December doesn’t work for us, then let’s pick another date. But whatever date that we pick should be able to allow people to plan.
How do you address that?
That is one of the reasons we are kicking the agenda to get back to January to December budget year because we believe that for the private sector, they work on a January to December cycle.
There are claims that the people are not being carried along during the budget formulation stage and this is seen as not promoting transparency in the budget process. How do you respond to this?
The law requires the budget to be based on the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and we do engage with Civil Societies Organisation and take their inputs. Perhaps, that engagement needs to be more robust.
At the time we were working with the MTEF for 2018 and 2020, one of the outcomes of that engagement was that we should go back and take another outlook, because most people pushed back on the 4.8 percent growth rate and we went back and adjusted it. So we always take into account observations made during that engagement.
