Centre for Social Justice says 2015 Budget is frivolous

The Lead Director, Centre for Social Justice (CJS), Mr Eze Onyekpere, has picked holes in the computation of 2015 N4.49 trillion federal budget, saying it is loaded with frivolous expenditures.

Onyekpere, who is a Civil Society Activist, said this on Monday in Abuja at a news briefing on the review of 2015 Budget.

He said that the budget was not likely to achieve the desired change on the already dire economy unless it was re-engineered.

He said that the 2015 budget allocation portrayed Nigeria dedicating its resources to servicing recurrent expenditure and less on capital expenditure.

He said that some frivolous items, which featured in past budgets found their ways to 2015 budget in spite of government’s austerity measures.

“Out of the N4.49 trillion 2015 budget allocation, N556.9 billion is appropriated to capital expenditure, representing 12.40 per cent, N2.6 trillion to recurrent expenditure which is about 58.02 per cent of the budget.

“The amount of N953.6 billion is appropriated to debt servicing, representing 21.22 per cent and N375.5 billion for statutory transfers, representing 8.36 per cent,” he said.

According to him, this portends that we have got our priority wrong. The recurrent vote is ballooning at the expense of capital expenditure.

“All steps purportedly taken by previous administrations to reduce the recurrent vote have been in vain. No country geared toward development can budgets this way,” he said.

Onyekpere said that no economy could truly attain its desired growth if huge proportion of funds were devoted to pay salaries and nothing to invest in capital expenditure.

“We are spending more money to service debts than we are investing in the future development of our country.

“The sad part of this is that most of the debts were incurred in violation of the law.

“The Federal Government should further disaggregate capital expenditure and review development capital and debt servicing.

“If the capital in statutory transfers is taken away from the overall vote, a sum of N412.57 billion will remain as the capital vote,” he said.

Onyekpere said that in spite of efforts by vocal organisation including Citizens Wealth Platform to point out inappropriate expenditure, the National Assembly did not discard the expenses.

He said that some of the expenses it termed frivolous was the high amount quoted for things like Newspaper, magazines, cleaning and fumigating, travel and accommodation, fuel cost and welfare packages.