Budget 2022: Failed on arrival?

It is with mustered hope in the face of daunting portends that the ‘Penpoint’ column wishes its numerous readers and all Nigerians a prosperous 2022, even as early signs that herald the run of the year, call for introspection by our country men and women. It does not require the attribute of clairvoyance to appreciate […]

It is with mustered hope in the face of daunting portends that the ‘Penpoint’ column wishes its numerous readers and all Nigerians a prosperous 2022, even as early signs that herald the run of the year, call for introspection by our country men and women. It does not require the attribute of clairvoyance to appreciate that 2022 with all its promises, will in many respects manifest much of the tendencies which defined the public space across the country in 2021. Given that the turn of any new year is inevitably launched from the tendencies of the receding year, it will amount to wishful thinking to expect 2022 to be much different from 2021. Indeed, so pervasive will much of such tendencies manifest as unsettling hangovers from 2021, that many may fail to see the differences between these two years, as far as life in the country is concerned. To many Nigerians life may even be more challenging, courtesy of the fresh tendencies that may ensue as follow-up to trending issues from 2021. 

If nothing else, the hellish conditions under which a wider cross section of Nigerians ‘celebrated’ or marked the festive season provides the basis for concern over where life in Nigeria for the ordinary citizen is heading to in the days, weeks and months of 2022. Needless to reiterate that prices of the most basic essentials for daily living shot beyond the rooftop, with many people hoping that with the festivities now over, there may be a respite in the inflationary spiral. 

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However, this is where the pangs from the disappointment for many Nigerians in 2022 will dwarf the ‘pinch’ from the higher prices of goods during the last year and especially its festive period. The truth of the matter is that the basis for optimism of better days in 2022 remains eroded, given the weak fall-back position by the country in 2021, that would have cushioned life this year. This is not the prognosis of a prophet of doom, but a perceptive appraisal of the state of the nation in 2022.

Among several pointers in that direction remains a pre-eminent one which is the tradition in Nigeria’s politics that governance collapses totally to give way to frenzied, partisan politicking in any year preceding a general election season. As is common knowledge, next year 2023 is the watershed year for general elections, and the focus of the political class is nothing other than how to seize political power at the polls. 

For politicians and parties in opposition at both the federal and state tiers of government, (which means outside the comfort of governance) the concern is how to win power by all means and exercise control of the mainstream of the common patrimony. And for those currently in power, the challenge is how to retain control of the reins of political power. 

This vicious dispensation de-emphasises the more legitimate concern of political leadership in the country, which should be the well-being of the wider cross-section of the society. But in the callousness of the cold calculus of seizing power by the country’s political class, the interest of the masses could as well be shelved for the power scramble game to be over. That is the name of the game in Nigeria of 2022. 

 At least two pointers to this dispensation draw from the circumstances associated with the passage of the 2022 federal government budget, as pertains to the actions by both the National Assembly and President Muhamadu Buhari. Not many Nigerians know that the budget exercise which was assented to rather hurriedly by the President also featured another round of back stage power-show between him and the federal legislators. In one vein the federal legislators were alleged to have dropped as many as 10,733 projects initiated by the executive arm, and inserted 6,576 new projects of their own volition. The President still went ahead to assent to the budget inspite of his misgivings over the tampering with the original budget provisions, by the legislators.

Of note here is that the see-saw drama between the President and the National Assembly legislators features strong imprints of typical Nigerian politics of crass opportunism and mindless scramble for the common patrimony by whoever finds himself or herself well positioned to do so, during a pre-election year. 

Typically the process of budgeting features a long drawn out exercise of interfacing between the legislators and leading lights of the executive arm, ostensibly ministers, permanent secretaries and chief accounting officers of respective MDAs. A situation where the presidency will complain about the dropping of 10,733 of its proposed projects by the National Assembly and same replaced with 6,576 of the latter’s, simply suggests a scramble to corner the public largesse for fostering political campaigns for personal gains, by the various cavalier elements in both the executive arm and the legislature. The net result is that much of these projects that were added and dropped as the cases may be, may not serve the intended purposes but, only facilitate political patronage and votes.

The implication is that much of the provisions of budget 2022 may offer less to move the country forward, but serve more in boosting the personal fortunes of individual political actors. Budget 2022, may therefore have been launched on the trajectory of unmitigated failure, courtesy of a vicious power play between the executive arm and the legislature. Pity!