Nigeria Finance Minister, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, has said that the Federal Government would maintain it’s over N6trillion national budget provisions in the 2017 appropriation bill. The 2017 budget proposal is expected to be submitted by President Muhammadu Buhari, after the National Assembly’s approval of the pending 2017—2019 Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF and Fiscal Strategy Paper, FSP.
Adeosun told members of the Senate Committee on Finance, led by its Chairman, John Owan Enoh, PDP, Cross River Central, who were on oversight visit to her ministry that government would maintain its over N6trillion annual budget provisions because it spends over N3 trillion out of the budget sum as recurrent expenditure for salaries, pension and debt services, leaving a paltry amount for capital projects.
She said that the country will be working with the figure for now as it can’t go below it anymore in the face of high expectations from Nigerians.
Senator Enoh had told the minister that the committee’s visit was “actually driven by the collective decision of the Senate a few weeks ago that all its standing committees should embarked on oversight visits to all ministries, departments and agencies of government.'”
“So, for us as a committee, in addition to having to respond to that requirement, it is imperative that we embark on this maiden visit.
“Our hope is that on this visit, the minister, quite apart from giving us some highlights into the implementation of the budget in the year 2016, would also throw some light on few of some of the things that she feels the committee should know, especially the performance of the economy, no matter how briefly, and some things that we could take advantage of because of our oversight function, so that we do not just hear them from secondary sources but firsthand.
“This is October, the Medium Term Expenditure Framework is already sent to the National Assembly for approval so that the 2017 budget can follow. We have a few revenue challenges; most of all is the performance of the independent revenue of government. So we think that the minister would take advantage of this meeting and be able to bring us to speed with a few of these things,” he added.
The Committee berated the minister for what it described as her poor handling of agencies under her watch, resulting in monumental leakages and loopholes.
“There are a lot of drained pipes and leakages in the customs; I do not think that the ministry under your watch has given sufficient attention to the customs in particular”, Senator Hope Uzodinma, a member of the committee and Chairman, Senate Committee on Customs told her.
Responding, Mrs Adeosun disclosed that government’s efforts at realising money from revenue generating agencies to meet the expectations of Nigerians were being hampered by high-level corruption still existing in the agencies, especially the Nigerian Customs Service, which officers she described as “cohesive crooks hard to break.”
She asked for an urgent intervention of the National Assembly in curbing the loopholes and excessive leakage not only in the revenue sourcing agencies but also in all other Federal Government’s agencies, saying they were stinking with corruption.
The minister said that about N2 trillion out of the budget figure was going out for salaries of workers and pension alone while the sum of N1.4 trillion was going into debt servicing, a development she noted, made it impossible to downsize the 2017 budget.
According to her, doing so would mean forgetting capital projects and only concentrating on payment of salaries, pension and servicing of debt alone.
