BudgIT, a civic organization promoting accountability and transparency in public spending in Nigeria, has underscored the pivotal role of national Budget in determining the standard of living in the country.
At a forum organized by the Finance and Business Online Publishers (FiBOP) in Lagos recently, Vahyala Kwaga, BudgIT’s Foundation Seniour Research and Policy Analyst, said Nigerians have to come to a point where they take the budget seriously.
He urged Nigerian’s to closely monitor government’s implementation of the budget in line with their projections.
His statement resonates with the fact that the wellbeing of Nigerians and the nation’s Economic prosperity depends to a very large extent, on how efficient and effective the government spent its money.
In his word, “it’s not just even about having a budget, is the money even available? the N28 trillion naira budgeted for the 2024 fiscal year by the Federal Government should have been about N50 trillion to N60 trillion naira if the government was serious.”
Kwaga explained that budgets help government to actually know how much it intended to spend, noting that this indirectly impacts on the ordinary citizen’s activities in the society.
“What this should mean to a layman is the road that you use to go from one state to another to sell your shoes, the money that is spent, the cost of goods that you buy in the market…
“The security or lack of security that you enjoy, among other things are directly going to be impacted by how much the government spends or does not spend on the budget.
“So, in more ways than one, the budget is very crucial and important and Nigerians only need to take it more seriously going forward”, he submitted.”
On debt, the BudgIT Foundation Research and Policy Analyst said despite the current debt overhang, the President Bola Tinubu led administration will likely borrow even more.
“it’s sad to see that the previous National Assembly appeared to just stamp a lot of requests for loan facilities by the Buhari administration…
“And with the nature of the relationship that we see between the current Senate President and the President of the Federal Republic, that appears to affect the practice of Constitutionally required ‘checks and balances’…
“It’s likely that it will be business as usual and there will be far more debts incurred in the coming fiscal years.”
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