Daniel Elombah
On Monday, July 12, 2010, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Mr. Olusegun Aganga announced to the whole
world, that the N6.6bn proposed for the celebration of Nigeria‘s 50th independence anniversary by President Goodluck Jonathan is not a waste.
Reacting to the public perception that such spending was wasteful amid pressing economic problems, the downward review from N10bn to N6.6bn notwithstanding, Aganga said part of the money will be used to renovate Lagos and Abuja airports.
This latest attempt to obfuscate issues fits into an emerging pattern of Aganga’s attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of Nigerians.
Nigerians remember very well that Aganga was the one who announced that Jonathan Goodluck’s administration is committed to 'improved' power supply and not 'uninterrupted' power supply.
This explanation was calculated to douse cold water on the expectation of Nigerians that President Jonathan, as the serving Minister for Power will keep his pledge to solve Nigeria’s power problems.
This in spite of the fact that as late as yesterday, 13 June 2010, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan once again assured Nigerians that this Administration has the political will to provide adequate power supply to the nation.
Aganga also once announced that Nigeria's unemployment was 19.7%, an obvious lie. It falls on another
minister, to rubbish his claims.
In trying to explain Mr Aganga’s verbal flatulence, my friend Feyi Fawehinmi writes that “A pattern is emerging here...every time the government needs to put out some unpopular or useless news, Aganga appears to be the person the task falls to”.
But I think otherwise.
I believe that Mr Aganga, having been brought down from the high Goldman Sach’s height of the world of exotic instruments- a world of hedging this exposure and plugging that deficit, the egg-head suffers from an acute or advanced degree of disconnection between the government and the governed- our world and theirs.
Mr Aganga had spent the past few years ensconced in the cushioned world of international finance. As a former Managing Director of Goldman Sachs UK, Aganga is well versed in Goldman Sachs sophistries and legerdemains.
As members of a US Senate panel honed in on Goldman Sach’s bet against the housing market and its questionable role as a so-called "market maker," partnering buyers and sellers of securities, the company maintained it merely was trying to
insulate itself from other large bets it made on residential real estate.
As the Senate panel skewered current and former executives of Goldman Sachs with pointed questions and criticisms, they insisted “We didn't have a massive short against the housing market and we certainly did not bet against our clients.
Now listen to our Olusegun Aganga trying to justify spending a whopping N9.6 billion to celebrate 50 years of failure: “the projects planned to be completed with part of the budget were things that should be in place in every working economy, adding,”We just tied them to the anniversary budget to make things faster.”
He said,”We are renovating Lagos and Abuja airports, for example. But airports should measure up to international standards normally. We are doing that and putting in place standard security systems so that the airports will be up to standard. These are places people will visit first. There are many other beneficial projects tied to this budget”.
This is our Minister of Finance, again doing what he does he does best; obfuscating issues, if I want to be charitable; While the “renovation” of the Abuja airport mentioned in the budget, Aganga made it appear as if the capital projects is the main thing.
An analysis by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC), of the Supplementary Appropriation Bill 2010, submitted by the Executive and published in the National Assembly Journal of 24 June 2010, shows clearly what the Nigeria@50 allocations were meant for, and they are certainly not for rehabilitating Lagos or Abuja Airports or any other capital projects:
Under the Nigeria@ budget proposal, the office of the Secretary of the Federation will spend allocation on among several items the following:
(a) Website design/hosting, (b) Anniversary Logo, (c) Publication of Compendium on the executives, legislature and the judiciary, (d) International Friendly Football Match, (e) Anniversary Parade, aerial display.
Also in the budget is a vote of N100 million to replace the carpets at the International Conference Centre, while special Nigeria @ 50 celebration uniforms will be produced for the security services at N1 billion.
A Golden Jubilee plaza will be constructed at the cost of N2.65 billion while its mounting will cost N10 million. Monuments, sculptures, towers, gifts, souvenirs and the National Stadium velodrome will cost Nigeria's tax payers about N1.5 billion.
The budget also includes a line item to spend N250 million on what it calls "equipment for safe aircraft parking at 5 airports" while the sum of N1 billion is to be spent on provision of additional parking at the Abuja airport.
In Part 1, of this article, I narrated how the Federal Government announced they have borrowed US $915 million from the World Bank to finance an expected deficit in the 2010 budget, but the next day Mr. Olusegun Aganga, on the air waves denying media reports that the federal government was to borrow about U S$ 950 million to finance the 2010 budget were 'absolutely wrong'.
Mr. Aganga told journalists after witnessing the signing of the 2010 budget by Acting President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan that the government would not borrow to fund the budget. Instead, he said, the deficit in the budget would be financed through other sources of revenue, including the sales of some assets and about US$ 500 million bond to be raised from the international market.
Yet while Aganga was lying through his teeth, Jonathan was drafting a badly mangled letter to the deputy Senate president asking the Senate to approve “the 2010 External Borrowing Plan of the Federal Government”.
Nigeria should be wary.
When Aganga made the shocking announcement that our unemployment is only 19.7%, I joked that Aganga should have added that our unemployment levels "is still within the internationally accepted benchmark for measuring unemployment sustainability" , the very language he used to justify why Nigeria has started borrowing from the World Bank again.
I couldn't imagine that there wasn't anyone in the audience at the NESG Forum that picked him up on unemployment figures; I wondered why someone couldn't tell Aganga that he's talking thrash.
Nigerians should kick strongly against the idea of spending so much money on the October 1, 2010 celebration. This extravagance makes no sense amid widespread poverty.
Nigeria‘s former High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Dr. Christopher Kolade, had said for Nigerians that were more than 50 years old, it was clear that what the country had going for it more than 50 years ago could not be compared with what obtained now.
He said, ”I have read in the papers that the country might be celebrating its 50 years of independence this year and that we might be spending N10bn on that. For those of us that are more than 50 years, if we think about what we had in place 50
years ago, then we shall be celebrating 50 years of decline.”
He had noted that spending such amount of money was pointless, stressing,”I don‘t know anyone in his right senses who will spend N10bn, celebrating 50 years of decline.”
I urge the National Assembly not to approve even the revised budget of N6.6bn. While President Jonathan should be commended for the downward review of the proposed budget, the revised amount is still unjustifiable in view of the harsh economic conditions many Nigerians now contend with.
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