JUST WHAT IS BUHARI PLANNING FOR NIGERIA IN 2019

JUST WHAT IS BUHARI PLANNING FOR NIGERIA IN 2019?

I have been on the streets demonstrating that the budget plan for 2019 is very inadequate, will spur another recession, may take Nigeria even into an economic depression, has no provisions in it for the poor masses, and has been reduced in gross terms for some inexplicable reasons. For some reasons, most Nigerians seem to be sleepwalking into disaster, except perhaps folks know what I don’t know. I am not a ‘boom and bust’ chaser. I would actually want to live in a thriving economy and society, but our leaders have made that an impossibility for me and you for now - except you’re in some public or private racket that’s still paying off at everyone’s expense. 

It is important to jerk the Buhari government on these issues because this government is consequential for what happens to us next year and the years after for several reasons. Budget proposals are being drawn up presently and whatever is agreed on and signed into law will take effect for next year except a new government comes in and decides on a root and branch review - even though it may face many legal hurdles and end up frustrated and buckled into mediocrity. Though it is unlikely that the budget will be signed before the end of this very administration on May 28, 2019, the velocity of plans that this administration has for the people will equally determine what the next one does. If the Buhari government surprisingly finds itself winning the next elections, then we are not only doomed to a dismal, depression-spurring budgeting paradigm, but perhaps 4 more years of unpardonable mediocrity. Though I’m hoping to defeat the incumbent in the upcoming elections, it doesn’t appear that any other candidate is thinking of hard issues like this. How else does one convince anybody that a country freshly stepping out of recession does not deliberately walk back into it? How else does one convince Nigerians that budgeting lower for a growing population is like predicting war and famine. How else does one open the eyes of Nigerians to the fact that there is indeed money to finance this economy at a much more elevated level if we had leaders who know what to look out for, and they were lucid enough to rein in their thieving friends? How do I rephrase and get Nigerians to know that we are really underperforming?

I am compelled to write about this issue again for several reasons. The DG National Bureau for Statistics, Dr Yemi Kale, in responding to some criticism upper week, that he doctors figures to make government look good, and has refused therefore to release the obviously awful unemployment records, gave information that was even more alarming; that he is unable to do his job because there has been no funds. This raised the remaining receding hairs on my head. So we have been flying blind all this while? Without data, what are we planning on? What is the big deal in funding data collection, collation and analysis except for the fact that those who should do the funding don’t believe in data. I recall being at Obafemi Awolowo University about two years ago for a lecture, and being on the same panel as Kale. He didn’t want to say much but at some point the intellectual environment got the better of him. Some of us had already charged up the atmosphere. And so Kale confessed that it was ridiculous the way government treats data. He said he got invited to meetings and instead of being asked to provide data; a premise for such meetings, the meetings are held and concluded without his input, in spite of his presence. He said on a couple of occasions, just as the meetings are adjourning, someone in the meeting will remember that he was there, and he would be asked to join some subcommittee which will keep minutes and achieve nothing. 

But today is not about data and Kale. Today is about revenue; our broken economy; the calamitous times we find ourselves as a people under the most inept government perhaps in the history of this country. 

Whereas I am on the streets telling these guys to do the needful and begin to increase our budget levels to the point where it would begin to look like they were budgeting for proper human beings and not beasts in some deserted open zoo, and whereas I have pointed them to where to look for this increased funding after letting them see very clearly that what we are doing is totally disgraceful to humanity, the government of Buhari has pointedly refused to think and is therefore making a plan to reduce revenue by 26% next year! I’m not so sure that it has happened in this country before for our budget to be reduced year on year (I actually tried to get some data on this but of course you know what happened. Ask Kale. Nigeria is a graveyard for data and information). I am still amazed as to why a government will write specifically to its revenue generating agencies and tell them, with a pat on the head, not to bother generating the amount they generated last year. This is a country fraught with fraud, thievery and corruption and where we should be wringing every and anything out of those guys who collect revenue on behalf of Nigeria. I did write, as part of recommendation to this government, that a private sector approach should be used. Give these CEOs of MDAs targets. No serious CEO reduces revenue targets no matter what happens. Certainly not by 26%. Someone has gone absolutely bonkers here! Please see https://punchng.com/fg-slashes-2019-agencies-revenue-by-n223-36bn/.  

And what about the current underperformance. FIRS has spent more than it derived from its much-advertised VAIDS (a very premature project which probably only just boosted a few pockets). FIRS’ best year till date is 2013 when it grossed N5.007Trillion. The revenue collection in 2014 was N4.69Trillion. This government came and revenue first dipped to N3.7Trillion, then climbed in 2016 and 2017 to N4.0Trillion and N4.3Trillion respectively. This year, that organization had grossed N4.3Trillion by October and may clock about N4.8Trillion this year end - after moving some figures around - but there seems no consideration for the fact that there was a devaluation of our currency by almost 50%, and so all government revenues - as well as private - should ordinarily be running at twice the old rate for things to make sense. FIRS should be targeting double what it collected in 2013; N10Trillion, otherwise there is nothing to cheer. The man there should ordinarily have lost his shirt if Buhari was a serious person.  

The more I continue on my quest for the presidency the more I see the bumbling in government. How can anyone not see this simple fact? The same goes for the Nigeria Customs Service. That institution collected N977Billion in 2014, dipped in 2015 to N903Billion, went further down to N898Billion in 2016 before climbing to N1.012Trillion in 2017. They celebrated. Buharists thumped their chests, but everyone seem to forget that their collections is based on importation (bad enough), but also that importation is based on mostly the dollar currency. In which case, their collections ought to have doubled. What they are collecting now in the Customs service, is effectively half of what they collected in 2013 - in real terms. 

What is going on in Nigeria? It is either the carting away of taxes and the people’s commonwealth has never been this bad, or that we are heading into some sort of abyss - a fiscal cliff. I believe even that we have been masking a collapsed economy with the quantum leap in debts. I mean, how can have all these problems all at once;

1. Spiked debt portfolio?
2. Dwindling revenue in the face of higher than expected crude oil prices?
3. Little or no disbursement for running budgets at any level?
4. Inability to increase minimum wage after 8 years?
5. Inability to pay salaries, pensions or gratuities by most states?
6. Inability to improve the lives of citizens in any salutary manner?

So, where is all our money? Captured by the mafia people who effectively run the government, and who delight in seeing most of us pine away in penury?

All I can say is I know there is a lot of dishonesty in this government. A friend of mine Ogho Okiti, used to organize this nice breakfast economic seminars at the Hilton. Until he invited Ben Akabueze one day. The man was not ready to engage on issues or answer any of the hard questions. When another friend, Princewill Ezeukwu asked some germane questions, he hemmed and hawed, dodged and weaved, lied and eventually wriggled out. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Here was someone I greatly respected. That is why we are here today. Perhaps because Ogho was getting closer to unraveling some truths, that program was killed.

This government is run on self-deceit and mass hypnotism at a much higher level than before. I don’t know what people who claim to have any modicum of integrity are doing near it. Every time the operatives of this government are asked what is going on with the economy, they begin a long story about what is happening in Europe and Mexico, Kathmandu and Madagascar, Antarctica and Iceland. They deceive themselves - and those gullible enough to believe them - that our problems is as a result of the end of quantitative easing in the USA, or Brexit. They scurry to hide under the excuse that investments here are reversing simply because the US has increased its rates. I’ve never seen a more self-deluded lot. And to make matters worse, they believe their own hype. 

Hear a recent report from the World Bank on International Debt Statistics, which shows that sub-saharan African countries contributed faster to the growth of debts in 2017, with Nigeria leading the charge with a 29% growth that year alone! Hear a little excerpt; 

“Countries in sub-Saharan Africa accumulated external debt at a faster pace than low and middle income countries in other regions in 2017: the combined external debt stock rose 15.5 percent from the previous year to $535 billion. Much of this increase was driven by a sharp rise in borrowing by two of the region’s largest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, where the external debt stock rose 29 percent and 21 percent respectively”.  The report went on to state that “A bulk of borrowing in the region could be traced to bond issuance by sovereigns and public- sector entities, which surged to a record level in 2017”. Again, where is the money?

I have spent much time analyzing Nigeria’s revenues and why we are having such mediocre budgets. My conclusion is that it is deliberate. We are a Mafia economy, and for anyone to get any independent income without keying into these Mafia movements, you have to work thrice hard and be four times as lucky. Without exception, nobody is ‘prosperous’ or comfortable today without a direct or indirect link to some fraud, corruption, deception, book-cooking, connivance against the people, open thievery, con job, illegal activity or the other. Businessmen use these things to pad their businesses and then take delight in lying through their teeth at entrepreneurship conferences about how they made it, thereby sending our young children on wild geese chase - and perhaps watching them with glee as they fall by the wayside due to frustration and exhaustion, or join them by selling their souls to the devil. In the public sector, they resume there daily to eat this country dead. They have since thrown caution to the wind and spend even more recklessly than the private sector guys. No accountability. Nobody cares. 

I close by suggesting one way to increase our taxes - especially company income taxes. It is important to always offer ways out. I will thus focus on increasing revenue today, while we deal with the thievery and inability to think on another day. What I know other countries to do is to link their company house (our CAC), at every level with the inland revenue service (FIRS), and the banks. No one can and should run a company account except they have a valid tax clearance on the basis for which the company house annual returns will be issued. Almost 1million out of the 1.6Million companies in Nigeria do no pay company taxes! If we do this, we can easily double or triple our tax collections on a yearly basis. Now who will run with this?

Meanwhile, why again is Buhari running for 2019 elections?