Bello Maigari, a member of the house of representatives, has
described the 2023 budget proposal as “organised corruption” by civil servants.
Maigari, a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC),
spoke on the floor of the house of representatives during the budget debate by
lawmakers on Wednesday.
On October 7, President Muhammadu Buhari presented a record
N20.51 trillion appropriation bill to a joint session of the national assembly.
A breakdown of the budget shows that N744 billion is
earmarked for statutory transfers, N6.557 trillion for debt service, N8.271
trillion for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure, while the sum of N4.934 trillion
is for contribution to the development fund for capital expenditure.
Speaking on Wednesday, the lawmaker representing
Jalingo/Yorro/Zing federal constituency of Taraba state, alleged that the
budget is a submission of “organised corruption”.
“This our budget, I will say, is a submission of organised
corruption by the civil servants,” he said.
“Mr Speaker, you just mentioned that it is only this government
(Buhari’s administration) that implements 100 percent capital projects, but 50
percent of the amount in this capital project goes to the pocket of civil
servants.”
He accused the ministry of works of deliberately proposing
funds incapable of executing and completing projects.
“Mr Speaker, the issue of splitting budget — they can
propose a project of N3 billion or N4 billion; you allocate only N50 million
for that project. For God’s sake, how can we do that project? A project is supposed
to be N6 billion and they make a proposal of N150 million. And the N150 million
will be released 100 percent to them. They cannot go to the site because the
money will not be enough for the contractor to go to the site,” he added.
The legislator asked his colleagues to scrutinise the
appropriation bill when the heads of ministries, departments and agencies
(MDAs) come to defend their proposals.
“I think we have to look at this budget very critically. It
is very important that at the committee work, they should look at these
projects. We have to look at this very seriously,” he said.
Lawmakers, who also spoke on the budget estimate, criticised
the proposed figure for debt servicing and petrol subsidy.
Toby Okechukwu, deputy minority leader, said subsidising
petrol is against the law.
“We need to take some steps back and let me remind you — the
Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) that was done by this parliament presupposes that
subsidy should have been withdrawn; subsidising petroleum products is a breach
of that law,” he said.
“I will suggest and advise this parliament to be courageous
and do its job. Suddenly, we are reducing the subsidy to six months — because
it’s been an election issue. The government had no courage to undertake that
enterprise. The subsidy is coming off from the second half of next year. It has
been political. It is not driven by patriotism.
“I think this house
should be courageous to face the reality and ensure that we retool the budget so
that it can be effective for Nigerians.”
Tahir Monguno, chief whip, said the federal government needs
to improve its revenue generation to reduce borrowing.
“The observation I
want to make is with regards to revenue generation. There is a need for
government to bring more Nigerians into the tax net so that there will be more
tax for the purpose of implementing our budget,” he said.
“We have had a situation where we had some challenges in
terms of revenue to implement the budget. We are going to do that by way of
focusing more searchlights on revenue generating agencies so that whatever
revenue they generate, it will be brought to government coffers.”
Onofiok Luke from Akwa Ibom, said it is a “time bomb” for
the president to allow subsidy to subsist till mid-June 2023.
“Mr President, right from when he was a candidate of his
party, running for election in 2014 to 2015 called subsidy a fraud and then
gave a commitment that when he come into office, that he will remove subsidy,”
Luke said.
“It is time bomb for the president to allow the removal of
subsidy till the mid year when a new administration is coming to force.
“This is a budget of transition and sustainability. For this budget to answer its name appropriately, Mr President has to do the needful as a strong leader which he is, to be able to address the issue of subsidy.”
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