– Senator Akanbi says there is a unique and special aspect of 2016 budget proposed by Buhari that is worth celebration
– Akanbi says the budget as proposed is one that will see Nigerian unemployed and underemployed youth gainfully employed into the non oil sector
Senator Rilwan Adesoji Akanbi
Senator Rilwan Adesoji Akanbi represents Oyo South Senatorial District and had been in House of Representatives in the Third Republic (1992-1993). He is now the Vice-Chairman Senate Committee on Solid Minerals and was a member of the ad hoc Committee that probed the Aviation sector.
In this interview with Naij.com, he expresses high hope that the proposed 2016 budget will help Nigeria return to the path of development. He justifies the deficit in the budget and hails President Muhammadu Buhari’s plan to deemphasise I’ll dependence.
Excerpts:
What is your general impression about the 2016 appropriation bill?
Answer: I will like to commend the burning passion of His Excellency President Muhammadu Buhari who passionately presented this 2016 appropriation bill titled the “Budget of Change” in person not by proxy as against the tradition that characterized the last administration. I indeed salute his determination to return Nigeria to its long abandoned path of greatness.
Some of your colleagues in the Senate have dismissed budget as “dead on arrival” and non feasible. As a ruling party senator, how do you react to these criticisms coming from the opposition?
Well, I support this 2016 budget not just because I am an APC Senator; rather, I am doing so based on its content. But let me first acknowledge the positions of other schools of thought who not only believed that 2016 budget is not implementable but hastily concluded that the budget is dead on arrival without objectively and properly subject the 2016 appropriation bill to a thorough fire of an objective examination, cross examination and re-examination.
Having realized the reasons that informed their uninformed positions about this 2016 appropriation bill, let me take time to do a clear analysis of the budget to prove to you that this budget is not only implementable but also very very realistic in every economic sense of it.
To what extent is it (budget) realistic?
Many assumed that 2016 budget is not realistic because the budget was proposed at crude oil bench mark of $38per barrel against the current price of $27per barrel. Truly, the parity cannot be swept under the carpet but if we look inward, we can make up for the difference by blocking holes, leakages and reduce our overhead cost.
We also need to widen our tax base and restructure our tax regime,
We also need to widen our tax base and restructure our tax regime,
(Cuts in) what are the measures to improve revenue, while deemphasizing dependence on oil?
Ok. VAT was introduced 23 years ago at the rate of 5% which happens to be one of the lowest in the world and which has never been reviewed up till now. That’s an area we have to look into.
More so, my careful study and objective analysis of this bill revealed to me that out of 6.08trilion budgeted therein a sum of 820billion only, which represents 13.49 percentage of the total budget sum is expected from crude oil revenue as against 1.64trilion which represents 36.49 percentage in 2015 appropriation Act. Then, this shows a radical drop of 50% in the projected oil revenue, this is a clear indication that this administration is no longer solely relying on oil revenue to finance her budget as it used to be.
Then there is another criticism. Ok. Another set equally argued that 2016 appropriation bill has the highest financial deficit of 2.22trilion but they failed to align their position with an uncontroversial and undisputable fact, that, in a situation like where we find ourselves today, every great economy in the world do borrow money to stimulate their economy one time or the other, provided that such money will be judiciously and efficiently dispensed without necessarily allowing it to end up in an account where it will become an idle fund. As the President of the Senate said, what’s more important is the judicious utilization of the money borrowed.
So, this is exactly what 2016 appropriation bill is set to achieve for Nigeria. It proposes to borrow money within acceptable economic limit to stimulate our economy for our generation and our children generation through a domestic borrowing of N984bilion and N900bilion foreign loan respectively with other N340bilion through recovered fund.
You expressed confidence in the feasibility of the proposed budget and justified its huge deficit. But how does this proposed budget address Nigeria’s critical development crisis in terms of human capital and infrastructures?
There is a unique and special aspect of 2016 budget proposed by Buhari that is worth celebrating. This the fact that 30 percentage of it is for capital expenditure which is N1.8trilion which 223 percent increase or thereabout compare to N557 bilion in the 2015 budget.
In this year’s proposed budget, the ministry of power, works and housing was allocated N467.65 billion as their total allocation with recurrent of 34.25bn and capital expenditure of N433.4 billion, the ministry of transportation was allocated N215.80 billion with recurrent of N13.79 billion and capital expenditure of N202 billion. These are the two ministries with major task of infrastructural development and their allocations show that this government is ready to address infrastructural deficiency, which shall create positive multiple effects on the economy.
And back to human development; you know issues of job, education etc. This 2016 budget as proposed is one that will see our unemployed and underemployed youth to be gainfully employed into the non oil sector of our economy which the government intends to diversify into.
This budget is all inclusive, all encompassing. Look, it is targeted at eradicating poverty in Nigeria by various intervention funds that has been proposed therein to the tune of N500bilion which shall be used to provide one, 500,000 jobs for our youth as qualified teachers in our schools; two, empowerment for our youth between 300,000 to 500,000 through skill acquisition and vocational training. And then, an additional cash transfer invoving one million extremely poor Nigerians who are to receive N5,000 naira monthly stipends. Others areas goala are feeding of primary school students across the nation; free education at tertiary level, meaning 100,000 students of science, technology, engineering and Mathematics would have access to free education; micro credit scheme through 60,000 one time soft loan would be given to market women and artisans. That’s about six points I just gave you!
Like other APC Senators, you see no downside to the budget? Laugh…
Laugh…Seriously, let emphasize that we need to re-engineer and overhaul all our structures and build a strong Government, where economic saboteur will not have a place to strive.
It’s not about party politics really. The situation demands that we should drop party politics and allow the Nigeria project to come far above any individual interest.
Another area is legislative oversight. And, on this, I want to align myself with the constant position of our President and the entire leadership of the Senate who have always maintained that 8th National Assembly must rise up for our statutory over sight functions and we should thereby show our unflinching support to this budget by supervising its effective implementation.
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