There is yet no study, or clear finding, on the percentage of Nigerians who find meaning, or attach real importance, to the annual budget, presented religiously, by the president and state governors, every year. From all indications, and with reasons, majority of citizens do not reckon with the government’s annual estimate, as being relevant to them. Some others take the document and the drama surrounding its unveiling, as a ruse. To these citizens, mostly engaged in subsistence economic activities, the budget and the noise around it are just one of those games governments and bureaucrats play, often at the expense of the common people.
It is difficult to fault any such cynical view of the annual exercise, that ought to be a most serious foundational work in the planning and determination of the thrust of economic activities of the national economy within a fiscal year. But then, why should anyone take the annual budget seriously? As impact in the lives of citizens and the general economic environment go, for instance, what difference does one annual budget in Nigeria, make, say in 2020, different from another year, say, 2023 or 2024? There is hardly any identifiable difference, beyond the ceremonies and media hoopla that accompany the formal presentation of each estimate. To bureaucrats and government officials in the line of appropriating money, state budget probably matters, because it heralds availability of fund, to draw. What is at issue, however, is the impact of the budget at the end of the day.
Perhaps, no state chief executive, whether at the federal, or state level, has proved more emphatically, by his bearing, than erstwhile governor of Cross River State, Ben Ayade, that presentation of annual budget in the Nigerian space, is not much more than one huge drama skit. Ayade, who was governor, between 2015-2023, was an All Progressives Congress Governor, for the records. To the man, commonly referred to as Prof., there is something in a name. What a budget is called, is possibly, more important than any other aspect of the budget, including its execution and impact. Consequently, Governor Ayade invested some good energy and creativity, coining titles for annual budgets, more attention, perhaps, than was dedicated to assiduously implement the budgets to impact on the economic landscape of his state. Thus, it was that in 2016, Governor Ayade presented a budget he named, Budget of Deep Vision. The following year, 2017, he had Budget of Infinite Transposition. In 2018, he produced Budget of Kinetic Crystallization. In 2019, it was Budget of Quabalistic Densification. He topped it up in 2020 with a Budget of Olympotic Meristemasis. And in 2021, he cooled down with Budget of Blush and Bliss. In 2022, on the eve of his departure as governor, Ayade gave the state the Budget of Conjugated Agglutination.
Interestingly bombastic and very poetic. That, literally, was where much of it ended. Whether those poetically-named budgets achieved uplifting impact in the state, is another matter. When therefore, President Bola Tinubu presented a N47.96 trillion 2025 annual Budget of Restoration at the National Assembly, not a few citizens would have retorted, as Nigerians will put it, “na today?”
As has been the case over the years, the 2025 budget is, more or less, a routine, both in structure and in declared aspiration. The document remains, to all practical purposes, a formal document that simply formalizes expenditure of public funds.
Of course, pundits ran their commentaries and analyses on television, as usual, while newspaper and media platforms copiously ran analyses and published details of sectoral allocations, with expression by government officials, of what magic the budget will do. It may likely end up as hot air. As usual.
Even for the routine that annual budgets have become, the defence of the 2025 budget, by various ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) has been remarkably insightful. The big issue is not that at a period of economic dire strait, every MDA wants more money than was allocated to it, a situation that the legislators before whom the requests have been made, have not seen as incongruent. The eye-popping issue is what is captured in the line items of the allocation to various MDAs, the same MDS asking for bigger allocation. The contempt for the public and the brazenness in profligacy, exposed in the estimates for almost all the MDAs speak loudly of the huge, insensitive joke that annual budgets represent, both in preparation and obviously, in execution. There has been scant sensitivity to public sensibilities in the so-called defence of the budgets by a number of chief executives of the MDAs.
Take the Ministry of Power, for instance. The information given by the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adedibu, before the joint committee of the National Assembly, that N8billion is appropriated to orientate Nigerians on prompt payment of electricity bills, beggars belief. Way back, on April 3 2024, the Tinubu government, as part of its bouquet of taxes unleashed on Nigerians, hiked electricity tariff, introducing the differentiated band tariffs. Consumers, classified under Band A,B and C had their electricity tariff hiked. Band A moved up from N68 kWh to N N225 kWh, later reduced to N206.Hapless electricity consumers have no option but to carry their burden and be paying the tariff.
Nine months down the line, the government, which has been presiding over constant collapse of the national grid, with its attendant disruption of electricity supply, now appropriates all of N8 billion for the Ministry of Power to orientate Nigerians on the need for prompt payment of their electricity bills, bills they have been paying all along. What manner of a country is Nigeria? Minister Adedibu further said, in justification of the N8billion, that there is need to educate Nigerians to understand that power infrastructure is a national asset that needs protection. Only the minister can explain what he was saying. N8biilion to orientate Nigerian electricity consumers to continue paying their electricity bill, cannot engender any restoration or national rebirth, as the 2025 budget purports as its goal.
Then came the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB). Under the leadership of Professor Ishaq Oloyede, JAMB has cut the profile of efficiency and discipline. Oloyede has done remarkably well in most aspects of his management of the examination board. His firmness, even-handedness, introduction of technology and efficiency in administering matriculation examinations have won him plaudits across board. It was a shock, therefore, that JAMB under him came along to justify the amount of N1.85billion for refreshments and killing mosquitos. Yet the motto of JAMB is service and Integrity. Such bogus estimates are almost the norm in Nigerian establishments and agencies. Laying out N1.85 billion in 2025 Nigeria, to kill mosquitos, does not however, tally with the known profile of the JAMB registrar. Even if JAM has taken up an added task to kill mosquitos in the entire Bwari Local Government Area, of the FCT, that estimate remains as vexatious as they came in the 2025 budget.
The Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun added a characteristic police dimension to the budget defence drama. Mid way, or a little deep into his prepared presentation before the joint committee on the Police, it was discovered by the legislators that what the chief law officer was reading was entirely different from the document he front-loaded to them. Only a policeman can pull that off. Interestingly, when the aberration was pointed out, the IGP was neither surprised, nor apologetic. He allowed the legislators to bicker among themselves over the matter and continued his briefing when the offended ones left, for him to continue where he stopped, on his own script.
Virtually every MDA that appeared before the National Assembly made case for more money. There has been no sign anywhere, of an economy that is on the brinks. There is also, not much at the defence of the budget by the MDAs, that spoke of relief, or cushioning of hardship for the ordinary citizens. For these citizens, everything about the 2025 annual budget, like its predecessors proclaim it a jargon of some ‘Olympotic’ nature, substantially unconnected to the actual need of the ordinary citizens.