Level of leakages is too huge for govt that claims to be fighting corruption

Senate President Bukola Saraki has flayed the Federal Government under President Muhammadu Buhari over revenue leakages that negatively impact implementation of budgets since the commencement of the present administration.

Saraki queried why the level of the leakages remained so high even though the government claims fight against corruption as one of its cardinal objectives.

He also berated Buhari for failing to engage the leadership of the National Assembly directly before submitting yearly Appropriation Bills, saying that this has continued to affect implementation.

Saraki who spoke to newspaper editors in Lagos recently also disclosed why implementation of budgets has been poor under the present administration.

He said:

It will be poor because the funding is not there. Go to the independent revenue, it has been under-performing from day one of this administration and they keep giving the man independent revenue that is not realistic-N700b, N800b, N900b – look at implementation – N150b, N200b – and these are areas we have been telling him, independent revenue is not working because there are many leakages. In a government that claims to be fighting corruption, the level of leakages is too huge. You are giving a budget of N900b and they are coming with N200b, so that N700b does not allow the implementation of the budget because first charge will go to personnel. Like this budget now, personnel is about N2.3tr, you cannot do anything, its gone, servicing of loans-overN2tr – overheads, even if you can’t take the whole, over N2tr, N6tr is gone, so recurrent expenditure has carried the whole money. It is now the little money after that, that can be used for capital expenditure. So, once you have gotten the revenue wrong, implementation will be a problem.

What is even more frightening now is that the deficit is so huge that majority of the borrowing in 2019 is going into recurrent expenditure, if you are not already seeing it now, and that is against the law. Borrowing is meant for capital expenditure. So, the major issue now is the issue of revenue, you must block the leakages. As long as you don’t block the leakages, you’ll have poor implementation, you’ll break the law and there will be no investment in capital infrastructure. And when there is no investment in capital infrastructure, there cannot be growth, there cannot be issue of addressing poverty, so where is the hope for Nigerians?

Currently, there is propaganda machinery on. Instead of us looking at the message, we just attack the messenger; this is the truth, and that is why it will continue to reoccur. Go and look at the budget in the last three years, you cannot address the issue of independent revenue. I think finally now the President is going to an extent now on oil subsidy. Go and look at my speech, I have shouted about the issue. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was doing illegality called cost-recovery. This is illegality, that is inefficiency. Again that is the source of leakage, because if subsidy management is efficient, we would save money, but if subsidy management is inefficient, monies that should be coming to the consolidated account is going away. These are the things that we should all tackle, but unfortunately that is not the case. So, when you talked about the implementation of the budget, it will be poor because there is no money to fund the budget. The reality is that there is no money.”