Budget extensions and other loathsome practices and processes for export

Absurdistan, patented by one of my friends, is an imaginary country where unbelievable absurdities and oddities are the new normal. We have so learnt from that ‘country’ and have developed several weird institutions, practices and processes to the extent that we are now perceived as the global headquarters of Absurdistanism. What is left is for the FGN to establish a committee (I volunteer to be the Executive Secretary) to document and streamline these practices, patent them, and hand them over to the Nigerian Export Promotion Council. I am volunteering to be the Executive Secretary of this committee on the condition that we shall receive the N5bn budget approved for the Taiwo Oyedele Zaccheaus Task Optimisation Committee. Zaccheus-Task? Tax Collection! I was propelled to discuss this matter due to the record-breaking practice of running two parallel budgets for 2025. This is even better because in 2024, we ran three budgets simultaneously: the 2023 budget, the 2023 supplementary budget and that of 2024. I hope the Guinness Book of World Records is taking note. Here are some of the poster kids of Absurdistanism.

INEC will intentionally do a criminal thing and dare you to go to court or procure, but refuse to deploy result processing technology, and nothing happens! The judiciary has taken over the role of voters, and 4 judges will issue four different judgments based on the same section of the constitution. It has also perfected the art of ‘mathemagics’, as exemplified in catapulting number 4 to number 1, a ‘substitution and elimination’ that even Chike Obi could not do! The National Assembly, overrun by ethically challenged folks and veteran EFCC customers receiving multiple sources, is making laws to please the executive. The Deputy Senate President has just declared that he will do anything the President tells him to do! (Jibrin Barau 25/6/25). Our politricks are so ‘matured’ that Wike of the PDP is vowing that an APC candidate must win in 2027 and daring the PDP to sack him, and they can’t do that! We practice ‘selectocracy’ rather than democracy or what Anselem Odinkalu described as democracy without voters. It is only in Nigeria that the Senate President could win an election when he did not take part in the primaries, and the state will sue an individual for defaming another individual. The same NASS has also institutionalised the art of budget padding! We have the NNPC, a private limited liability company whose policies are determined, announced and defended by the government; the police, which tells you that bail is free… until you need it; a crime-bursting institution that is the most corrupt; EFCC, which specialises in re-looting the loot; DISCOS that use generators in their offices; and a Minister of Power that uses a power bank!

The extension of the 2024 capital budget to run parallelly with that of 2025 was due to ‘limited fiscal space (wetin be this one?) and challenges of fund disbursement to guarantee the continuity of projects and safeguard resources already committed (Senator Adeola, Chair Senate Committee on Appropriation), who has the singular honour of simultaneously being from Lagos and Ogun States. And strangely enough, only capital budgets are usually extended; the recurrent budget is always 101 percent implemented. So, why package the 2025 budget when we could not conclude that of 2024 to the extent that they have to run concurrently? Why did we go ahead to package a supplementary budget of N6.2 trillion when we were not able to execute the original 2024 budget of N28 trillion?

The dangers of this absurdity are obvious, but borrowing from those who ‘know more books than myself’ ‘weakens the integrity of the budgeting, erodes transparency and accountability, complicates oversight, increases the probability of multiple spending, sets a troubling precedent, undermines fiscal discipline, complicates budget tracking and implementation, deviates significantly from global standard budgetary processes, evidences poor due diligence, undermines the credibility of government, evidences an opaque and intentionally delayed disbursement system and erodes public confidence in the budgetary process’. Stranger still, a motion to probe the 2024 capital budget of N9.995 trillion did not see the light of day.

By the way, what is limited fiscal space? Why go into the 2025 budget since 2024 could not be executed to the extent that it has to run simultaneously with 2025? How can a country that does not know its population be so advanced that its ‘evil servants’ (not me, talk to them) can now run two parallel budgets? I hope that the Guinness Book of Records is watching! I signed off while awaiting my appointment letter.

Ik Muo, PhD, Department of Business Administration, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, 08033026625