Behind the curtains of a budget speech

Whenever December arrives, and the rituals of budget presentations by the states and federal governments get into full swing, the excitement heightens at the prospect of the outcomes. For me, who has been associated with budget preparations at some level, here and there, it is an occasion to recall and relive the hustle and bustle […]

Whenever December arrives, and the rituals of budget presentations by the states and federal governments get into full swing, the excitement heightens at the prospect of the outcomes. For me, who has been associated with budget preparations at some level, here and there, it is an occasion to recall and relive the hustle and bustle that always goes on behind the scenes until the final pronouncements are made. Now, budget-making and presentation have become crowded affairs, with many links outside the offices of the budget owners – the president, governors, and local government chairpersons.

However, once all consultations and calculations are complete and the raw budget is ready, designated public officers will compile everything into a cohesive document for the chief executive to present. What you finally see as presented by the president or the state governor would be a result of gruelling hard work by many levels of such public officials. To be engaged in that kind of humdrum assignment was a great privilege and one of the most difficult challenges you would come up against in any public service career. It was mainly in Maiduguri that one was closely associated with speechwriting in the Governor’s Office and, thereafter, for some years, produced a draft budget speech every December. Thatwas in the late 1980s, during the period when the military held sway in governance. There was some modicum of discipline in the annual budget-making process, mainly because it mainly occurred across ministries and other government agencies.

Unless some extraordinary or significant event disrupted the process, all state budgets, as well as the federal government budget, were consistently released before the close of the preceding year. This scheduling tradition meant that, come December, the public could reliably expect a flurry of budget speeches from state

military governors in the media. The experiences encountered during budget speech writing in Maiduguri were not necessarily unique; similar procedures and practices could be taking place in governors’ offices across the country.

During the period I was appointed to head the Political Department of the Governor’s Office, it was small and compact, with hand-picked staff who could endure the rigorous discipline of the office. The staff were not more than five or six, all verified with good-standing humanities degrees. Along with the typists, the entire staff of the political office could be counted on the fingers of two hands. We all worked under the supervision of the Secretary to the Military Government (SMG), who headed both the governor’s office as well as the entire state civil service. However, due to the exigencies of our schedule, we had seamless access to the governor.

Production of speeches in the late 1980s and early 1990s would look rather medieval compared to the norm today. Whenever a speechwriting assignment arose, I would task one of my officers to compose the first draft. He would get along writing in longhand and hand over whatever he had written to the typist, who would set it on a typewriter and type it out either on paper or on a stencil.

When the speech is finally typed on paper, it will undergo my scrutiny and then be returned to the typewriter to make corrections and additions. This cycle of correction and typing will go on until the final draft.

When the draft is submitted to the governor, it will still undergo another cycle of corrections and additions before the final copy. It was a tedious process, marked by endless nights of anguish. The consolation now is that technology has simplified the process. The laptop can now handle most of the mundane aspects of speech production. Add that to internet access, and you would now have near- perfect working conditions.

The political department staff were in tow wherever the governor went. This is because the governor might require a speech at every stop and a brief to go along.

The military governors did a lot of touring, and the Permsec Political was a fixture of every entourage, taking along his typist plus all the paraphernalia – typewriters, photocopying machine, etc.

It is not always the case that producing the final draft of the budget speech ends happily. I recall a particular instance in 1989 when we worked so hard to make the final copy of the 1990 budget speech. The governor was breathing down our necks to have it ready, and at last, we had the final draft set. That evening, I

rushed to the Government House to deliver the draft. I was holding the bulky document in my hands and was on the stairs leading to the governor’s office when I met the principal secretary to the governor coming down. He asked where I was rushing to. I barely replied that I was going to hand in the final draft of the budget speech. He suppressed a chuckle and told me there was no need for the rush, as the governor had been posted out. I was nonplussed and felt the blood drain from all my veins. In the event, it was the new military governor who read the 1990 budget speech.