Last week, President Buhari submitted the country’s revised 2016 budget to the National Assembly. This comes after months of delay and the controversy over a misplaced copy of the budget. This year’s N6.08 trillion budget is about 20 percent higher than the N4.493 trillion budget of 2015, even as the president noted he was trying to save money for the economy.
In spite of the fall in the price of oil, a weakened Naira and other economic issues affecting the country, the presidency has added some seemingly ridiculous items to the budget.
According to Reuters, last week, Nigeria’s minister of finance, Kemi Adeosun wrote, in an article entitled Nigeria’s Economy: The Road to Recovery, “the country would raise about $5 billion from multiple external sources. This includes multilateral agencies, export credit agencies and we are also planning to tap the Eurobond market.”
Here is a list of 10 ridiculous allocations in Nigeria’s “epic and historical” 2016 budget:
- Purchase of Computers for the Federal Ministry of Health – N 6,663,104
- Purchase of Printers for the Federal Ministry of Health – N 297,354,194
- Purchase of Office Furniture allocated to 170 Federal Government Agencies – N10,852,189,055
- Purchase of Computers allocated to 116 Federal Government Agencies – N6,784,254,367
- Purchase of Computer software allocated to 84 Federal Government Agencies – N13,497,239,454
- Cost of budget preparation allocated to 116 Federal Government Agencies – N 1,601,207,323
- Purchase of newspaper and magazines allocated to 642 Federal Government Agencies – N 371,923,849
- Cost of website update for the Federal Ministry of Solid Minerals Development – N759,234,275
- Anniversaries/Celebration for the Ministry of Transportation -N 109,500,000
- Provision of sports equipment for participation in sports activities for the Ministry of Transportation – N33,014,500
It is rather unsettling that some of the items in the 2016 budget appeared twice, but with different figures. For instance the Ministry of Transport had two figures for the provision of sports equipment. The first is N33,014,500 and the second N14,000,000. Nigerians continue to speculate about possible alterations to the figures in the budget; a subject which is being debated upon by the members of the National Assembly. (Source: Ventures Africa)
