A public affairs analyst, Pa Adebiyi Odekanyin, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to institute a probe into how the Federal Government expenditure increased progressively from N94 billion in 1999 to N4.98 trillion in 2013, while the National Assembly’s budget also grew from N6.94 billion in 1999 to N150 billion till date .
Odekanyin made the call on Saturday in Oyo town.
“In summary, the budgets of the past 15 years have not translated into development for the common people, thus paving the way for the political class and senior government officials to benefit immeasurably’’.
Odekanyin explained that critical analysis of 2012 and 2013 federal budgets revealed that by comparing those two years and projected 2014 federal government recurrent expenditures, as well as using benchmarks of international best practice for 28 ministries, over N501 billion could have been saved in just one year’s budget from the selected ministries.
“From the analysis of the detailed budget of 2012, many areas of wastage of expenditure in almost all the Ministries were discovered. Some of these Ministries, Departments and Agencies ought to have been scrapped or merged due to the duplicity of functions. Unfortunately, the then past administrations seemed to have developed cold feet in the much-talked about rationalisation.’’
He further lamented on how N9 billion was reportedly expended annually to maintain 10 airplanes in the presidential fleet, when the whooping sums of money could be used to send more than 1.4 million Nigerian children to public primary school for one year.
“For instance, while the immediate past administration allowed ASUU to be on strike for over four months on the pretence that it had no money, some government agencies and ministries were wasting money acquiring armoured bullet proof vehicles for hundreds of millions. Imagine the hanky- panky going on in the investigation.
“Is it not shameful that a government that claimed to have waged the war against corruption could provide the shield for its Minister involved in the bullet proof car scandal? This is why Nigerians, especially the elite, must rise above primordial sentiments and give total support to the present government’s war against corruption. Wastage of public funds must stop now’’.
Odekanyin described former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration as a clear indication that the then PDP-led Federal Government not only lacked in focus and vision, but really uncultured in tolerance, traditional democracy, participatory and transparent governance.
The analyst also bemoaned what it referred to as ”pretence and deceptive mechanism in procedural approaches” used by Jonathan in concert with his party’s cohorts to under-develop and cheat the people.
According to him, “the overview of the country’s under-democratic governance and under-development was as a result of arbitrary and tyrannical rule, injustice and lack of respect for humanity, an aftermath of lost cultural norms and values to Western culture inherited by the elite-leadership from colonialism and perpetuated by neo-colonialism’’.
He stated that for the country to achieve its glory and humane polity, citizens must resist all forms of arbitrary and tyrannical rule “and compel those in leadership positions to start maximizing a pattern of civility rooted in our culture”.
”Legitimacy comes from the people, and what is legitimate is determined by the extent to which the people themselves are involved in decision making, especially on burning and sensitive matters. For what throws a political system off balance, and particularly a democracy, is a sudden imbalance between an outburst of expectations, and the capacity in meeting them. The leadership must have the will of an efficient and capable leadership, not by the barrels of the guns, but sense of commitment and devotion.”
