By Nik Ogbulie.
Public officials have the responsibility of providing smooth and responsible passage for the national budget by making sure that the processing of budget implementation remains very diligent and free from fraud.
Senator Abubakar Bagudu, Minister of Budget and National planning, said this within the week while explaining what the public referred to as grey areas that influence budget processes which also go a long way to affect economic stability.
Speaking to a focused group of business and financial journalists in Lagos, Bagudu noted that, “we should put everyone to task to achieving our revenue targets for a purposeful budget planning. Once you do not have good revenue you begin to have problems that have minimum irreducable level , which puts the economy in difficulty.”
The minister charged the media to call the public service to order so that budgets must be delivered appropriately for public good since the instrumentality of its execution or implementation depends largely on the way public servants engineer the delivery.
Bagudu added that government may begin to challenge public officials with performance which remains the necessary action for the realisation of every budget objectives. The minister’s assertions may not have been unconnected with growing indications of fraud, sabotage and regulation miscarriages that trailed budgeted funds with various ministries, most of which are known to have been truncated by public officers in attempts to enrich themselves.
The minister noted that the essence of enhancing performance by public officials is a prelude to realising the appropriate revenue targets through efficiency so that the increasing level of crisis in the annual revenue will begin to tumble, to the extent that government could also channel its borrowing to some specific and appropriate areas that will activate the economy. He indicated that there may not be any option to this than government challenging public officers to be alive to their statutory functions. He also noted that revenue crisis solutions may be in form of improving revenue collection processes such as applying some sound methodologies to achieve higher efficiency.
Bagudu regrets that while large number of containers come into Nigeria filled with various products, about 85% of same containers leave the Nigerian environment empty, as the country has failed over time to reciprocate their import request with exportable needs. He feels so sad when he said that “our containers come down here very full and go back empty”
According to the minister, “we are in an economy with strong absorptive capacity, headwinds have done only little damage to our programmes as the Nigerian Domestic economy is an engine of growth by itself. He insisted that private capital development would greatly be needed to fill the gaps in the country’s development ecosystem with the budget fulfilling the infrastructure growth in the economy.
He is of the opinion that while trying to fashion a new and sustainable way of improving the revenue position and budgetary process in the country, nothing should compensate for responsibility as Nigerians have to put pressure on institutions to do the needful.
He is aware and worried that the level of insecurity affects the planning procedures in his ministry.He said that the government has heavily invested on security so much so that could be felt, but noted that “investment on security is not building a house, so you cannot see it”.
However, Bagudu has emphasised of “tough choices”, indicating that there are those strong things that must be done,but very difficult to do; noting that, “we chose democracy and democracy has opportunity costs”.
As a matter of fact, Bagudu is of the impression that his team is making the plans while listening to the nuances of democracy as they affect the interest nd rights of over 200 million Nigerians.
