Budget inflations: Buhari to sack Directors

Indications emerged during the weekend that President Muhammadu Buhari is set to fire some top government officials for allegedly attempting to blowup the 2016 budget by over N1.7trillion. The budget mafias reportedly embarrassed the Presidency by smuggling into the budget proposals such items as vote for Aso Rock Clinic and some communication equipment, a report by The Nation revealed.
According to the report, the list of all the culprits was being compiled last night following a directive by President Muhammadu Buhari. The Budget Mafia, sources said last night, decided to jack up the budget proposal by N1.7trillion after learning that the budget for this year would be in the region of N8trillion. The presidency also discovered that the civil servants recommended N3 trillion for overhead alone. This has now been slashed to N163billion as against the N177billion last year. Some of the 6,000 items in the 2016 Budget were said to have been smuggled into the proposals by the cartel.
The report quoted a source as saying, “Some top civil servants sabotaged the presidency by including extraneous items in the 2016 Budget.”“Members of the Budget Mafia are spread across all Ministries, Departments and Agencies.“When the budget was being compiled, they frustrated all the deadlines set by the presidency.“Despite the vigilance of Buhari and his cabinet, it was embarrassing to the government to hear of some smuggled items.“Bureaucratic resistance and entrenched systemic corrupt practices dogged every move of the presidency to produce proposals reflecting financial prudence and frugality, during the preparation of the 2016 Budget now before the National Assembly.“For instance, after learning that the presidency was considering a large budget of possibly N8 trillion in order to significantly increase capital expenditure, bureaucrats brought a proposal ofN9.7 trillion for overhead and capital spending even without personnel spending.“Of the proposed N9.7 trillion, the bureaucrats planned to spend an alarming N3 trillion on overhead alone but the presidency eventually slashed this to N163b lower by 8% than 2015 budget which was N177billion, indicating massive cut of some of the main provisions by the Buhari presidency.“These bureaucrats also proposed to spend N2.1 trillion on personnel for the 2016 estimates compared to about N1.8 trillion in the 2015 budget.“But the presidency also cut this down to N1.7 trillion in the final estimates sent to the legislature.”Another source, who played a key role in the final filtration of the budget, said the “smuggling of some items angered President Buhari. He added: “Some people were so bent on exploiting the system that the time was simply not sufficient to stop them but since the budget is only an estimate, the implementation part now offers the presidency the opportunity to tame the corrupt intentions and practices.“We were virtually doing vigil to beat the time since the budget had to be presented before the end of the year to the National Assembly and while some of the civil servants eventually cooperated, those who were resistant caused the insertions of many of the provisions that are now embarrassing the government.“The situation and its fallout were so bad that it provoked the annoyance of the President who nonetheless kept his cool buying time so as to meet the target date for the presentation of the budget in line with extant laws and regulations governing the budget process,” he added..